


Fracture

by crackleviolet



Series: Violets are Blue [6]
Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Body Horror, Choking, Drugging, F/M, Gunshots, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Off screen Torture, Sexual Harassment, spoilers for v route
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-01-28 23:52:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 46,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12618388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crackleviolet/pseuds/crackleviolet
Summary: MC is kidnapped by Mint Eye and V has to come clean (a retelling of V route)





	1. Chapter 1

One night in every twenty, Nari dreamed of her first RFA party.  While her circumstances changed from one night to the next, one singular element remained the same: there was always something wrong. More than once she had been unable to find Jumin, or torn her dress in the middle of the dance floor. Once she dreamed that she was the only person in the party hall with a face. **  
**

The music was always too loud; the guests horrifying in increasingly different ways. Once she woke screaming, leaving Jumin to psychoanalyze her in the early hours of the morning. She felt guilty when she caught him rubbing his eyes the day after, but ultimately his voice was the thing that stopped her trembling.

This time around, the party hall sat frozen in time. As she walked the circumference of the dance floor, Nari examined each face, some halfway through sipping their champagne with beads of liquid frozen above their lips. When she tapped at them, they were solid against her fingers, like pearls of burnished bronze. The band stood still all of the while, fingers carefully positioned at every string, leaving the room silent but for her heels against the floor.

She was curious of everything. Every dress left mid twirl, every smile frozen in place. It did not take her long to notice the blood spots on the floor. They were small at first, leading away from the fountain and into a gaggle of frozen photographers. As she followed them, however, they got larger and larger, the spaces between them growing few and far between. Suddenly, she felt frozen too, the hairs on the back of her neck standing up on end and her hands growing increasingly clammy.

When she heard the voice it was as a whisper; rasping sounds that she originally mistook for the brush of her dress against the floor, though later came to realise each syllable formed her name. The voice was coming from in between the photographers, at the end of the trail of blood and out of sight, and she took a deep breath before following the sound.

For a flickering moment, she thought she saw V, on his hands and knees and clutching at his stomach.  His hands and shirt were drowning in red and she gasped, taking two steps backwards and staring into his face as he turned to look at her.

“Nari,” he called, lifting a bloody hand. “Nari please-”

The moment he said it, the dance floor spurred into action. Suddenly the closest photographer shoved his shoulder into Nari’s chest and sent her toppling to the floor. She leaned forward, crawling on her hands and knees towards V, who barely seemed to register when she did.

“V,” she said, hand on his shoulder. “V, I’ll get you out of here!”

He did not look at her, though, transfixed by something on the other side of the room.

“V!”

She presumed shock was to blame and turned to look in the same direction, only to suck in a sharp breath. The guests had surrounded them both while she wasn’t looking and they all had the same golden hair and sharp knives. Nari clapped a hand against her mouth, wanting to scream, though nothing came out.

When she opened her eyes, her senses remained so muddled that it was difficult to believe she wasn’t still dreaming.

She was used to waking up at the penthouse, Jumin beside her. Sometimes she would look into his restful expression and reach out to touch his cheek, only to hold back for fear of waking him up.  Jumin more often than not went to bed with work on his mind, deliberating statistics even as he brushed his teeth. It took him longer than most to fall into anything more than a light slumber and Nari never got tired of seeing him so completely carefree.

She was not in the penthouse now, though. This time she was in a hospital, sitting at the bedside of a broken man.

Broken. The word circled her brain unbidden and she reached for his hand.

That was how everyone else referred to him. Everyone at least once in all of the time she had known him, from nurse to doctor to casual acquaintance.  Even she had fallen into the trap on those few occasions they first crossed paths on the messenger. She did not understand his grief, only that something somewhere was hurting him for reasons she did not know. It was difficult not to think of his broken relationship as she sat alone in Rika’s apartment, surrounded by the possessions of a dead woman. When he arrived at Jumin’s penthouse, clutching Elizabeth Third, she had barely been able to shake the realisation of how incredibly thin and pale he was and while she knew she would never forget her first party, one detail that stood far apart from the others was the moment he embraced her, the smile across his face never quite reaching his eyes.

It was only after sharing a glass of wine and conversation, giggling at stories past, that she really thought she knew otherwise. Broken, after all, left her thinking of smashed plates and shattered vases, none of which had the capacity to heal. Nari had every faith that the dark cloud of grief that so followed him would leave one day, though held back from any attempts at explicit reassurance. To say that wherever Rika was she would not want him to be miserable seemed oddly inappropriate. Everything she knew about her came from the messenger, after all, and claiming to understand her wills and wishes bordered on an intimacy she dared not presume.

It was difficult not to think of him as broken now that he lay in a hospital bed, face obscured by breathing apparatus and arms littered with intravenous tubes.

Only a matter of hours before, though it felt like months, she had hobbled into accident and emergency with him slumped over her shoulder. She had sobbed all of the way through the car ride, pressing a compress to V’s shirt and begging him to hold on; to stay alive or she would never forgive him.

There were approximately ten pints of blood in the human body and she refused to think about how many covered her hands. She refused to think about his blood soaked shirt or her own smeared clothes; the sheen of sweat that coated his forehead and how slow his words had become. She refused to accept that he was broken. That this was to be goodbye.

Even as doctors swarmed his bed and stripped off his shirt, she stood at the edge of the room in a haze of fog, capable of little more than nodding numbly at anyone’s questions.

“Will he…” She asked as they wheeled away his bed, not wanting to say the word ‘survive’ for fear of acknowledging the alternative.

Their expressions were enough of an answer; the combination of pity and panic in their faces as they took in the bags beneath her eyes. They expected her to crumble into tears on the spot, and in truth so did she. She remained calm and quiet, though, even as she scrubbed her hands clean and trembled in the waiting room, expecting the worst even as she refused to accept it as an option.

Not for the first time in her life, she felt like a deer in the headlights and did not even bother to feign confidence as she eyed the waiting room doors, pulling at a loose thread in the hem of her blouse as she stared at the cracks in the floor tiles. Strangers came and went, some checking in and others even sitting beside her, and while Nari had no doubts that they shot sideways glances at her bloodstained skirt and disheveled hair, she could not make out a single one of their faces. When a nurse came to direct her to a secluded recovery room, she gaped for several seconds at her, watching her lips move as she described V’s condition and directed her to a particular room, unable to make out a single word of the conversation. When she got to her feet, it was more out of a hunch than any genuine understanding.

She did not remember falling asleep or even taking a seat in the optimistically bright room, only that he lay still, body peppered by bruises and the peaceful expression across his face hidden almost entirely from view.

For a moment, sleepily stroking her fingers across his hands, she took in the curl of his eyelashes, which seemed to be the only part of his face left untouched. She considered the chill of his fingers; the rasping whispers as he called her name; no longer able to tell which parts had truly happened and which were merely nightmares.

She recognised Jumin’s footsteps long before he opened the door; made out his voice as he spoke on the phone like her own name on the summer air. It had been so long since she last heard him speak and Nari squeezed her eyes shut, knowing that if she turned to look at him then she would almost certainly fall apart on the spot.

“It seems that the surgery was a success,” he said, readjusting the phone against his ear as he closed the door behind him. “It might be some time before he wakes up, however.”

A matter of days ago, she had dragged the engagement ring from her finger and tossed it halfway across the room, a clink of metal against the kitchen tiles the last thing she heard as she stormed through the bedroom door.

“I…” He said, slipping his phone into his pocket. “Nari-”

She had regretted it almost immediately; fell to the ground and pressed her back to the wood, hugging her knees and refusing to listen to Jumin’s soft footsteps in the dining room. She hadn’t meant a single one of the things she had said, hadn’t meant to go so far as to throw away something she treasured.

For days she had agonised over what she might say when she next saw him, but in the end she settled for saying nothing at all. She rested V’s hand back down on the bed and climbed out of her chair without a word, running across the room to stretch her arms around Jumin’s middle.

Rest had not come easily to her over the past few days. She had missed the feel of his body against hers and the familiarness of the bed they shared. She had missed the steady sound of his breathing in the middle of the night; the way he sometimes-as a consequence of so rarely sharing a bed prior to their relationship- rolled over in his sleep only to land on her. She had missed waking up to the smell of pancakes, Elizabeth sitting on the pillow next to her and swatting at her face. Gripping onto Jumin, she no longer felt lost.

She meant to ask him how she had stumbled into a nightmare wide awake, but words failed her and instead she found herself sobbing into his shirt, all at once overcome with every emotion she had buried deep inside of her while clutching at V in the back of Seven’s car or hobbling into the hospital with him slumped over her shoulder.

Suddenly she felt sick at the blood on her skirt; suddenly unable to stop thinking of strange potions and clammy hands against her cheeks in the dead of night.

_Promise you won’t leave me._

“How,” she wept. “How did this happen?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Juyeon is not my oc! She is the brainchild of yoosungshoodie on tumblr/professionalcinderella on ao3, who let me borrow her for this fic

It began with an argument long in the making. **  
**

She had been so excited to be married, to take the next step and build a life together, and Jumin made no secret of the fact that he felt the same way. In the weeks that followed the RFA party, they stayed awake long into the night, hands interlocked and equally wistful, imagining their wedding ceremony and the sort of life they might have afterwards.

“I’ll make you pancakes in a morning,” he whispered in her ear once, wrapping his arms around her middle. “Buttermilk ones, with a fruit compote.”

Even as she chuckled at the mental image, she knew at the back of her mind such a thing was unrealistic. Jumin usually woke several hours before her, stirring her awake quite by accident when he climbed out of bed. She had to admit she quite liked the thought of him lingering in the penthouse for several hours more every day, even if she knew she would never inflict such a thing on Jaehee.

Retrospectively, Nari did not know how she didn’t see the signs at the beginning: their engagement coming during the honeymoon stage of their relationship; the pair of them laughing and joking at a life they knew could never be. Nari was not ashamed to admit that she had fallen in love very quickly and accepted Jumin’s proposal in exactly the rash sort of manner she disapproved of in other people. She could not imagine a life without Jumin and did not particularly want to, though the fact remained that she accepted his wedding ring in the spur of the moment surrounded by paparazzi, somewhat naively believing they could return to normality afterwards.

Those weeks of wistful dreaming sat alongside harsher realities; of Nari receiving invitations to interviews at national publications, reporters calling to her across the street to ask about her shoes or intimate details of her relationship with Jumin. For the first time in her life she had a stylist, who upended her current wardrobe within a matter of minutes, replacing almost everything with something glittery, expensive and usually designer.

Suddenly she had extensive scripts of dialogue for every interview, public appearance and even casual meeting. Before she knew it, she had been invited to afternoon tea with the wives and girlfriends of almost every prominent CEO in the country, many of whom had even pursued Jumin in years past only to be rejected after they proved useful. Nari got the impression that they did not like her much, grinning into their wine glasses at such  _a lovely Cinderella story_.

She knew she ought to have had some kind of realisation when Chief Han invited them both to dinner two days after the RFA party. Considering the awkward nature of their first meeting, Nari had not exactly been looking forward to it, though Jumin wrapped his hand around hers as she fidgeted beside him in the car.

The incident with Glam Choi left C&R’s reputation in a precarious position and if Nari’s relationship with Chief Han was not already awkward, then it certainly became so in the weeks that followed. He greeted them at dinner with a stony look and announcement that they would have to get married in six months.

“We need to promote our image as a family-centric organisation,” he said as if it were obvious, the plate of sea bream in front of him largely abandoned and at that point mostly for show. “What better than a wedding?”

At the time Nari had glanced at Jumin out of the corner of her eyes, willing him to express some sort of disagreement. Six months was no time at all and, while she had known from the beginning that the ceremony would have some degree of media involvement, she had not imagined that the event would revolve around it so completely. Jumin said nothing of the sort, though. Instead he glanced up from his potatoes and agreed that it was the logical next step.

At the time, she planned to speak up. To ask if her feelings held no bearing on her own wedding. In retrospect, she wished she had, rather than shrugging off her annoyance in favour of staying respectful. Jumin had only recently caused Chief Han a great deal of embarrassment, after all, and it would be incredibly presumptuous to demand even more of him during such a difficult time for the company.

Nari soon had an extensive schedule and an assistant, meetings with caterers, designers, architects. She came to wonder how it was she had had so much free time before and found herself sinking low into the bathtub or shutting herself away in the shower where no one might disturb her. Jumin’s schedule was twice as full as hers and, on the rare occasions that he came home early from the office, they were too tired for conversation and sometimes even fell asleep in the midst of dragging off one another’s clothes.

As strange as it seemed, she had never given much thought to weddings prior to her own engagement. At her previous job, she had grinned, squealed and congratulated colleagues on their own respective announcements, with a quiet acceptance that such things were not for her. However, despite her relative lack of enthusiasm on the matter, she had always presumed she would choose her own dress if such a thing ever happened. In reality, though, she perched on a stool while a designer she had never heard of looped pins into the hem of a dress somebody else had decided she should wear. Even with Jumin’s explanation that C&R had been scouting the studio for several years, it was a bitter pill to swallow.

And then came the final straw.

Nari had very few creative freedoms, though she did have access to the guest list.

“I think there’s a problem with the invitations,” she said one evening as Jumin took off his work clothes.

“Oh?” He poked his head around the bedroom door, tie half unfastened and lying loose around his neck. “How so?”

“Maybe I’m not reading this properly,” she said, scrolling up and down the document, “but it seems your mother isn’t on it.”

“Oh.”

The transformation was almost instantaneous; one moment he was curious and the next practically bored. Nari watched him turn back into the bedroom, and for a moment, she wondered if she had misinterpreted the few occasions Jumin had recalled his mother. He had told her only the barest of details; that her name was Ji-eun and she worked in corporate law. Nari had assumed, since he said so in the present tense, that she was alive. His reaction left her wondering otherwise.

“I’m sorry,” she said when he left the bedroom, “I thought…never mind…I shouldn’t have presumed.”

“It’s no bother,” he said, “her presence would simply be…complicated. It would probably not cause problems for the company, but I’d rather she not attend.”

Ordinarily, such reasoning would not have phased her. She had been careful, after all, to adhere to each and every memorandum passed her way to ensure she did not accidentally cause a scandal. She had made peace with each new expectation, presuming all of the while that Jumin had made sacrifices too. The guest list grew longer with each drafting, ranging from acquaintances of the company to media representatives.

His words were innocent enough, though all it did was serve as a reminder of each and every decision she had not made.

“You’d…you’d  _rather_ she not?”

“Have I offended you in some way?”

“I…” Nari began, debating whether or not to follow through on what she meant to say. “It’s not that I mind if she doesn’t attend…it’s just…”

At that, she sighed and set aside the tablet.

“There are three hundred people on our guest list and I don’t even know well over two thirds of the guests but if I were to say I’d rather they not attend-”

“Ah, of course. I understand your frustration, though each guest was personally approved by me, my father and the head of our PR sector.”

“But why are their opinions so important? I know that C&R needs the publicity, but this is  _our_ wedding and-”

She took a deep breath, trying not to imagine conversations she had had with newly engaged friends, all of whom were excited at the prospect of choosing cake and decorations with their partners. Nari would have given her left leg to have tested cakes with Jumin, to have laughed and joked about the design she chose for her wedding dress, and the more she tried not to think about it the more it weighed on her mind.

“It just…it feels like I’m marrying C&R instead of you.”

It seemed almost ridiculous to say that a list sparked an argument, though the pair of them debated in the kitchen for some time. At first, their points only slightly conflicted: Jumin confused at why she was so upset over an event that was purely for show, and Nari caught in the middle of trying to understand not only his perspective but her own. She had never given wedding ceremonies much thought, after all, and did not understand why a ceremony she had never given much thought to upset her so much.

Eventually, the debate fell to corporate, press centric weddings. Nari claimed they were soulless, while Jumin insisted they were practical and to fall into the trap of pretty dresses and champagne toasts was naive at best.

“Perhaps it is because we come from such different backgrounds,” he mused. “I have never been to a single wedding that didn’t exist to fulfill some degree of agenda.”

He did not say it maliciously, but it cut anyway. After one too many Cinderella remarks and interviews at magazines that focused so heavily on how it must feel to step out of obscurity and snare one of the country’s most eligible bachelors, Nari had genuinely come to wonder if his high society peers saw her as anything more than a carefully decorated joke. She had no job, no ties to anyone, and even Sarah and Glam Choi had represented a company.

“Do you…think of me as common?”

It was a loaded question and in honesty she did not want to know the answer. On some level, she supposed she expected him to laugh and reassure her that it wasn’t the case, leaving her head to spin when he said nothing at all.

_“Do you?”_

“I think… that if I had not proposed to you so publicly, in such a way, I might never have married you.”

He referred to his father’s objections, though she caught his meaning too late, long after she dragged the engagement ring from her finger and tossed it halfway across the room.

“You may not marry me yet,” she said, a clink of metal against the kitchen tiles the last thing she heard as she stormed through the bedroom door.

The moment she closed it, her legs buckled beneath her and she dropped to the floor. Just as she had while they dined with his father, the day he announced the date of their wedding, Nari willed Jumin to say something. To knock at the door behind her and give her the chance to explain herself in a way that made sense.

He didn’t, though. Instead she heard him pour a glass of wine and retire to bed several hours later than usual.

That night, Nari herself slept only briefly, checking in and out of the messenger only to find he never logged in. When she woke up, it was a little past seven and, judging from the dull ache in her neck and back, she had been sitting in the same awkward position for a decent amount of time. For a few blissful seconds she did not remember the events of the previous night, only to have a moment of stark realisation when she noticed she still wore her clothes from the previous day.

With the exception of Elizabeth sunning herself in Jumin’s usual chair, the penthouse was almost entirely empty and Nari switched on the television as she ate breakfast by way of a distraction. Her current situation was many miles apart from the buttermilk pancakes and fruit compote in Jumin’s version of their ideal future.  

At eight, she received a phone call from her assistant, who seemed to be in even more of a good mood than usual.

As assistants went, Juyeon Park was exactly the opposite of what Nari might have expected from an employee of C&R. Jumin announced her one evening as they tucked into dinner, explaining that Nari’s schedule was growing so rapidly that she needed a second set of hands to alleviate the pressure. At the time she dreaded it, imagining all manner of stern faced individuals worried to make a mistake or offend her, and so it was a pleasant surprise when she met Juyeon exactly three days later. Juyeon had a wide smile and laughed at everything, taking Nari’s hand the first time they met and insisting she call her ‘Jenny’. Nari was sure she recognised her from somewhere, though had never been able to place it in all of the time she had known her. On this morning in particular, she was a welcome distraction.

“Good morning Miss Song,” she said in her usual sing song manner, “I hope you rested well! We have a long day ahead of us.”

“We do?”

“Oh? Mr Han didn’t tell you? He made an amendment to your schedule yesterday.”

Nari didn’t know how to tell Juyeon that of course he hadn’t. That they had argued from the moment he got home from work before he got the chance to tell her anything.

“No,” she said, “he didn’t mention it to me.”

“Oh, well no bother, I’ll forward you the details right away!”

* * *

Jumin’s amendment was a tour of a castle outside of the city. According to Juyeon, he was contemplating it as a location for the wedding ceremony and Nari could not help but wonder if it was a wasted effort. As she pulled on her clothes for the day, she chanced second glances at her phone, wanting nothing more than to call him and apologise. She already missed him; already regretted letting her transition into high society overwhelm her to the point that she lost all rationality. 

She considered it, in fact, throughout the car journey, barely paying attention to Juyeon singing along to the pop music on the radio to Driver Kim’s amusement. She pulled her phone out of her bag once and then twice, sometimes going so far as to log onto the messenger, only to find no one online.

“This is the place!” Juyeon cried out after they had been in the car for several hours.

Truthfully, Nari had not read her e-mail in much detail. She certainly had not believed they were really going to a castle and so she could not help but stare as she climbed out of the car, taking in its enormous doors and tall towers.

“Is….this is…”

She did not know exactly how to describe her feelings towards it and both Driver Kim and Juyeon laughed at the wide eyed way she took in the view.

“I’ll find somewhere to park,” said Driver Kim, though she barely heard him. “I’ll be with you shortly.”

As she walked the dirt path to the front door, Juyeon only a little way behind, Nari could hardly believe such a place existed. It was like stepping into a fairy tale, the sort that Jumin liked alluding to while half asleep and even more affectionate than usual.

“If I kiss you, will you wake up?” He said once, while she lay a hair’s breadth from him and pretended to be asleep.

For the briefest of moments, taking in the archways and carefully kept hedges, her heart sang at the memory of his warm breath against her forehead, only to retract his lips before they ever made contact.

“What a trickster you are,” he had said, catching her with her eyes open before he could kiss her. “Stealing my kisses away like this.”

“It’s not stealing if you want me to have them,” she had joked, only to gasp as he rolled over on top of her, ready with another witty retort. It never crossed his lips, though, for she reached up to comb a few stray locks of hair from his face and he leaned into her touch, smile rapidly softening.

It was just like Jumin to find a fairy tale castle in the middle of nowhere, though that thought left her feeling rather more dejected than anything else.

They were barely halfway across the path when a young man came rushing out of the castle to greet them. Nari assumed he worked at the place, as he wore a bright magenta jacket, complete with a waistcoat and cravat.

“Good morning!” He said, lowering himself into a bow with several flourishes. “My name is Ray…I’ve been waiting for you.”

“I’m sorry if we’re late,” said Juyeon. “The side roads are a little hard to navigate.”

Ray did not seem overly annoyed by any sort of minor inconvenience, however, laughing out loud at her apology.

“It’s no mind,” he said. “Thank you for coming this far.”

He turned to Nari then, presumably noticing the way she had been staring at him ever since he lifted his head and she saw him up close. If his hair were not so pale and his eyes such a bright green….

“Does something trouble you?”

“Oh!” Nari flushed a bright pink and shook her head. “I’m sorry..it’s just…you look like someone I know.”

She did not mean to offend him, and from the dark look crossing his face, she started to worry that she had. In a matter of seconds, though, he laughed off her words.

“Someone handsome, I hope!”

He turned to the castle then and motioned for her to follow, leaving Juyeon to reach for her shoulder.

“I’ll go and find Driver Kim. I’ll catch up with you inside.”

In retrospect, of course, she wished she had never set foot inside of the castle; never let Juyeon leave her side. She was sure she would never forgive herself for following Ray inside so willingly. the sound of the doors slamming shut behind her lingering in her memories like the crack of a snare.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fake chats come courtesy of [this site](http://shaorankun.com/mmchat/)  
> My actual FC for Nari is Park Shin Hye, but I borrowed the heroine from In Your Arms Tonight for her icon to keep the style consistent.

In the years that followed, Nari never forgot the shimmering gold of the castle walls; the high ceilings that rose into magnificent arches. She remembered each satin curtain and sweet smelling flower, each of which perfumed the air so strongly that it made her nauseous. One detail, however, lingered in her imagination far more so than any other and that was the silence. It was difficult not to think of earthquakes, thunder and gunshots as the main doors slammed shut behind her and left even the chandeliers trembling. When peace and quiet resumed, it was as all encompassing as a fog across her senses.

Outside of what she had seen on television, she did not know what to expect from a castle, especially one without a single signpost or roadmark to denote its existence. She wondered if they were always so unnervingly quiet, with no clocks in the entrance hall and only one employee to greet her.

She found herself thinking about one of the very first afternoon teas she had ever attended, primped and polished in a set of eleven inch heels. She knew nothing at all about the woman who had invited her, and the feeling seemed to be mutual, for she addressed the invitation to ‘the future Mrs Han’.

Jumin had warned her that afternoon tea would be conversation and little more and in that much he was quite correct. From the moment she sat down to the moment she left, her host seemed insistent to discuss diet plans and the varying fortunes of yet more women she knew nothing about. What’s more, when she admitted to knowing very little on the matter, her host reacted in such a way that Nari wondered if it was actually common knowledge and she was merely ignorant.

Perhaps castles were always empty and she was the one that was strange.

If Ray noticed her quiet contemplation, he did not say so, instead announcing that he had spent the morning making preparations for her arrival.

“It must have been a long drive here,” he said, reaching to open a set of double doors. “I was not sure which kind of cuisine you preferred, so do forgive my enthusiasm!”

Only as she stepped into the next room did she understand his meaning. It was a dining room of sorts, equally as beautiful as the rest of the castle, with a gleaming suit of armour in each corner and enormous table in the middle. Even without counting, Nari could tell that it was big enough to seat twenty people and someone had taken a great amount of care not only to assemble a feast upon it but also to place candles and vases in between the dishes.

As feasts went, the foods were numerous and varied, ranging from croissants, fresh fruit and waffles to eggs, rice and other side dishes. It was extravagant even in comparison to the occasions Jumin brought in a chef.

“I….” She said, the combined scents of sweet, savoury, buttery and more leaving her mouth watering. “You made all of this yourself?”

She hoped she had misunderstood him, for she had eaten breakfast already and such a meal had surely taken hours, though he responded with a bright smile and little bow before pulling out the nearest chair.

“Please, take a seat.”

Nari supposed it made sense to at the very least help herself to a cup of coffee while waiting for Juyeon. Perhaps she and Driver Kim could help themselves to a pastry while she followed Ray on a tour of the castle.

“This place,” she said, Ray snatching up a cup for her before she got the chance to reach for one. “What inspired you to build such a thing?”

She had asked designers and cake artisans a similar question out of politeness, with far less desire to learn the answer. Her heart swelled, though, at Ray’s delighted expression as he poured her coffee, as eager to tell her the answer as she had been to ask.

“Ah, well that’s simple!” He said, planting a cup in front of her so gently that she did not hear it make contact with the table. “We hope that in the days to come, this place will become a paradise.”

“A...paradise?”

“Mhhmm! A place of serenity and freedom from the constraints of society...somewhere for inspiration and rediscovery.”

Nari considered their surroundings as she sipped her coffee, from its deep blue curtains and golden candle brackets to the strange blue rose Ray had affixed to his jacket.

“Well you’re certainly on the right track! It’s so beautiful here.”

“I knew you would like it,” said Ray, smile softening. “She said you would.”

“She?”

“Ah! Our leader here. She’s the one in charge of this castle, from blueprints to invitations. She wanted you to see the work we do here.”

“Oh,” said Nari, cradling her coffee. “Well she sounds like an excellent person. I can’t wait to meet her.”

* * *

For twenty minutes, she waited for Juyeon and Driver Kim to join them. After twenty five, she pulled her phone from her bag and dialled Juyeon’s number.

“How long does it take to find a parking space,” she muttered, impatient to see the rest of the castle and quickly running out of things to talk about with her host. She had not had much at all in the way of warning and, despite Ray’s patience, there was only so much that he could explain to her of the site without any sort of visual aid.

Juyeon didn’t answer, though, and Nari sighed as she replaced her phone.

“I’m so sorry about this,” she said. “I don’t know what’s taking them so long….maybe we should just go ahead and start the tour?”

“As you wish!”

Ray all but bounced to his feet and reached out a hand for her to take. At first she laughed at the gesture and had no intentions of accepting it at all, but the room began to spin the moment she stood up and she had no choice but to accept him as an anchor.

“Wow,” she said, legs suddenly far heavier than she remembered and stumbling on the spot. “I’m so sorry, I-”

“It’s no bother!”

“I…”

She wanted to tell him she felt strange, that her senses were blurring together as if she thrashed underwater. Ray spoke, but she could not distinguish any of the sounds, instead squinting and clapping her hands over her ears at how it sounded so very much like music coming from a different room, too faint for her to place the lyrics.

She closed her eyes, thoughts foggy and knees buckling, her last conscious thought one of silent resignation. Of all of the places she might have passed out, she could have done worse than a castle.

* * *

“I’m sure it’s not that bad!”

Jumin glared from his computer screen and Jihyun sighed, closing the portfolio.

“You’re right. It’s awful.”

Jihyun was hardly a regular visitor to C&R. He had always been busy for one reason or another, whether it was handling his photography career, RFA business or the conflict of his increasingly complicated private life. In the last few months before Rika’s disappearance in particular, he barely saw Jumin at all.

Ever since the engagement, though, he found himself visiting a great deal more often, rifling through whatever applications Jumin happened to be working on or helping himself to chocolates or cake sent from other companies and clients by way of congratulations.

This time around Jumin was rather more annoyed than usual and all but threw an application at him the moment he walked through the door.

“Look at this!”

As a teenager, he had always assumed both he and Jumin would marry someone their fathers chose as a matter of convenience. His proposal to Rika was as much an act of rebellion as it was one of love, and one he had quietly deemed an unlikely outcome for Jumin. Jumin was not opposed to defying his father, but only when doing so was unquestionably in his favour, which unfortunately was somewhat unusual. Jihyun did not believe Jumin to be the sort to make grand gestures or speak of devotion, not because he lacked passion, but because the outcome of such things could not be guaranteed. His proposal to Nari was out of character for many reasons and the consequences were rapidly catching up to him.

Jumin had never been in a relationship prior to Nari, nor had he made much of a point to go against Chief Han’s wishes. Of late, he was trapped in the middle of both, with his devotion to Nari leaning him one way while devotion to his father pushed the other. For once, Jumin had an incentive to push back and defy Chief Han, though he often remained unwilling to do so, even if that put him at odds with Nari.

Chief Han’s creative decisions were becoming more and more absurd of late, however, and his choice of a photographer was only the latest in a spell of choices Jumin refused regardless of profit.

Jihyun couldn't help but raise his eyebrows as he turned the portfolio over in his hands, taking in even the most minute of details.

“Is that...a goat?”

“An ibex,” sighed Jumin. “I don’t know what my father is thinking.”

“I can’t blame him,” said Jihyun. “It’s not easy to find good photographers these days.”

“Was that a joke?”

“.......Not originally.”

Jumin sat back in his chair, using his finger and thumb to massage his temples.

“It’s completely reasonable of him to ask this of me…. I did put the company in this position…”

“You might have done,” said Jihyun, walking over to the desk to place the portfolio in Jumin’s in tray. “But did she?”

Jumin’s desk was always immaculate, carefully arranged to ensure maximum productivity. Up until recently, the only hint that it belonged to him at all was its carefully engraved name plate, for he did not bother to decorate it with personal belongings and trinkets. More recently, though, he had placed a framed photograph of Nari in the gap between his monitor and desk phone.

It was a candid shot of Nari admiring the view from one of the windows in Jumin’s penthouse and Jihyun had taken to admiring it even mid conversation. Perhaps it was because he had come to know her well during his recovery, but there was something about the softness of her expression that was almost familiar, as if he had taken the photograph even though such a thing was inappropriate. Nari was Jumin’s fiancee, of course, and while it made sense for them to have a certain sort of bond, it could never extend to the intimacy of that picture.

Instead of referring to her by name, he picked up the photo and placed it in the center of the desk, prompting Jumin to lift it up himself. Before he could say anything on the matter, however, his desk phone began to ring and he set it down again.

“Ah, just a moment,” he said, lifting the receiver. “Hello, this is Jumin Han…”

As Jumin spoke on the phone, Jihyun pulled out a chair and reached into his jacket for his cell phone, a habit he had yet to fully take on board. He was used to switching off his phone for hours at a time only to find six or seven messages when he later checked it. This was one such occasion, for even though it had been only half an hour since he texted Jumin to let him know he was on his way to the C&R building, he already had two message notifications.

The first was Jumin’s reply, sharp and to the point:- **_I’ll see you soon._ **

The second was from an unknown number and he raised an eyebrow as he opened it, only for his blood to run cold.

It was a photograph of Nari, taken in a room he did not recognise. She was propped up on a couch, with the camera angled to capture her lifeless expression. On the left of the photograph was another person, holding Nari up into the shot, while their own face remained obscured save for long, golden hair. They had wrapped Nari’s arm over their shoulders and raised the other to take the picture.

“Excellent, I’ll confirm tomorrow,” Jumin set aside his phone, ready to continue the conversation. “Now then, where were...is something wrong?”

Jihyun didn’t know how long he stared at his phone screen with trembling hands, only that the sound of Jumin’’s voice dragged him back to Earth.

“I….” He said, before shoving his phone in his pocket and cracking a grin. “That was Daeshim, it seems like I’m late for an appointment. Sorry but we’ll have to continue this later.”

“Of course,” said Jumin. “Is it a new client?

“No….just some unfinished business.”

* * *

When Nari first drifted in and out of consciousness, it was chaos. Her eyelids were heavy and she could not make out any of the muffled voices around her. Someone touched their hand against her forehead and she winced at the chill, all while someone else lifted her into their arms. Something about them smelled familiar; a sickeningly sweet perfume that she was sure she knew but could not place.

She woke later in an unfamiliar room with a crushing headache and dry mouth, someone dabbing a damp cloth against her face.

“We were worried there for a moment,” said Ray, setting the cloth inside a bowl of water on the bedside table. “Are you feeling better?”

“I…”

Nari glanced around the room, taking in the pale pink decor and brass chandelier-Ray sitting on the bed beside her-realisation slowly sinking in.

“I,” she said, understanding rapidly replaced by embarrassment. “I’m so sorry; I must have overdone it...I’m fine now.”

She chose not to mention that she could not feel her arms or legs, instead gripping hold of the bedsheets in an attempt to push herself into a sitting position. Her head began to spin the moment she did so, however, and Ray gripped hold of her shoulder with an expression of concern.

“Careful,” he said, maneuvering her back to the pillows. “You’ve been out like a light for hours, you need rest!”

_Hours?_

The confusion must have transferred to her face, because after rearranging the covers, Ray got to his feet and opened the curtains, revealing the evening sky.

“No, no, no,” said Nari, trying to sit up a second time, “no this can’t be right!”

If she had been asleep for that long, then she could only imagine how much work she had missed; how many last minute meetings she might have been expected to attend. Had Juyeon called the office to let them know what had happened? And Jumin...had he been informed? Her hair stood up on end at the thought of him receiving the news. She already regretted their argument and could not stand the thought of him being worried about her when she had never gotten the chance to properly apologise.

“J...Juyeon,” she said, gripping onto the bed even as her arms began to slip. “Is she...I want to see her.”

She flopped backwards onto the bed moments later, leaving Ray to approach the bed and rearrange the bed sheets once again.

“She’s fine,” he said with a grin. “Your driver too! I’ll let them know that you’re awake, but you must get some sleep. We’ve made arrangements for you to stay the night.”

“I can’t,” she said. “Thank you for your offer, but-”

She did not say what she was really thinking; that if Jumin returned home and found her gone he would assume the worst, no matter what she told him.

“I have to go home,” she said, “my fiance has excellent doctors at his disposal and Driver Kim will take excellent care of me. There’s really no need for me to inconvenience you like this.”

Ray only laughed at her protests, however.

“It’s no inconvenience,” he said, “as a matter of fact, it was our leader’s idea! Once you’ve rested a little longer, she will be more than happy to send you home. The least we can do under these circumstances is be hospitable.”

As loathe as she was to admit it, his request was far from unreasonable. Returning home to the penthouse in her current state would surely raise several eyebrows and possibly even fan the flames of a scandal.

“Fine,” she said, scanning the room for her belongings. “I just need to make a phone call.”

Someone had placed her coat and purse at a nearby desk, only a matter of three paces away. Ray glanced across at it too before picking it up and placing it on the bedside cabinet.

“Now then,” he said, picking up the bowl of water he had previously been using. “Dinner will be served in a few hours. The signal around here is not so good, but I wrote down my number just here...by all means give me a call if there’s anything you need.”

He beamed then, so excited that the bowl of water almost overflowed in his arms.

“Even it’s just conversation! I’ve been practising my knock knock jokes!”

Nari had no intention of bothering him any further, but she nodded anyway.

“I’ll bear that in mind.”

Ray bowed twice before turning to leave the room, switching off the light on his way out and shrouding her in darkness. For a grand total of ten seconds she glanced at the unfamiliar shadows of the equally unfamiliar room before stretching out her arms and legs and dragging herself onto her side to reach for her phone. It should have been a simple gesture, yet it took her three attempts to so much as brush her fingers against the straps of her purse. When she finally got a good grip, she dragged her purse towards her, willing it to roll over onto its side and land on the bed.

She was not so lucky, however. The moment it left the cabinet, it fell straight to the floor, her fingers no longer nimble enough to catch hold. Nari groaned and allowed herself to flop over onto her front, snaking an arm down to undo the zip. She had never known her body feel so heavy and the moment she changed the angle of her head, it began to throb as if in protest.

“Almost there,” she hissed, in an attempt to focus on anything else.

When she finally got a hold of her phone, she let out a cry of happiness and laid it on the pillow beside her, too tired from the effort to turn over a third time. Ray had not been lying, as it turned out. There really was hardly any signal. Maybe enough bars to communicate within the local vicinity, but certainly not enough to speak clearly on the phone.

She drafted one message to Jumin and then two, explaining her circumstances in as much detail as she could muster, having to enter some words as many as three times because of how clumsy her hands had become.

As she moved to press send, a notification came through from the messenger about a new chatroom and immediately she abandoned the draft, eager to get in touch with someone as quickly as possible.


	4. Chapter 4

**THREE MONTHS AGO**

“They look happy, don’t they?”

“Hm?”

Jihyun glanced up from fastening his seatbelt and followed Luciel’s gaze through the windscreen of his car to the smiling couple across the street.

Despite the odds, the third RFA party had been a raging success. Each and every new guest (and some familiar faces) were delighted not only at the prospect of meeting again but the newest member of the RFA. Nari Song, a person Jihyun still knew barely anything about, had defied any expectation he might have had of her, including breaking through the frosty exterior of his childhood friend.

As the party came to a close, the presses lingered, eager for one more shot of the future Mrs Han. Until recently she had been a nobody and that knowledge alone made her that much more fascinating. Where had she come from? What was her story? How was it she had come from the shadows and into Jumin’s life? As such, Jumin and Nari had been trapped at the party hall doors for a good fifteen minutes, Nari wearing Jumin’s jacket over her shoulders and his hand on the small of her back. 

“Ah,” said Jihyun, “they look good together.”

Luciel leaned across the steering wheel, watching Nari turn to each new camera, sometimes with an apologetic smile for not noticing them the first time. When he noticed Jihyun was watching, he sat up straight with a sniff and stretch of his shoulders.

“So, what was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

 

* * *

If Jihyun had learned anything from the past few years, it was the value of an excellent memory when making any attempt to lie. As he took a seat with Luciel in the first bar they came to, he struggled to remember exactly how much of the truth he had disclosed to his inner circle and which were pure fabrications. He was not sure if he even remembered the first lie he had told; the most obvious answer was his lie to the police, but even that story was an amalgamation of several more: of long sleeved shirts and cancelled appointments, missed phone calls and prescription pills.

At some point without realising he had lost himself in a tangle of lies and was no longer capable of unravelling them. In the back of his mind there was no starting point- only a mess he was sure he would feel lonely without.

He took in each and every bubble in Luciel’s soda and the stains on the table in front of him, supposing they made a strange pair: Luciel in his black shirt and white waistcoat, Jihyun himself in the same threadbare cardigan he had been wearing the day before. He could not help but smirk as he sipped his drink, recalling a skinny redhead in equally threadbare clothes ogling his coat and shoes.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” he said at last. “About…”

He wanted to say ‘about Rika’, though her name froze on his lips and left his hands trembling. His chest heaved and he clenched them into fists under the table, recalling soft hands against his jawline and the sweet scent of perfume. 

“It’s about the last few years.”

“V,” said Luciel, “I need to know...Saeran...is he…”

Luciel spoke his brother’s name as softly as one might a wish and Jihyun took a deep breath.

The last time he saw Saeran, he had been sitting under a tree with a sketchbook. He liked to draw and wasn’t half bad at it, laying down in the grass to sketch flowers or butterflies. When he saw Jihyun approaching, he had jumped to his feet, sketchbook in hand. At some point, presumably because of the polite refusals he received when he asked Jihyun or Rika to pass on photographs or letters to Luciel, he had decided to fill the sketchbook with things he saw every day.

“Once you fill it,” Jihyun had said, “you can pass it onto him in person!”

It hurt even to say it, seeing Saeran’s expression of glee as he ran to grab a pencil, wholly ignorant of his own ever complicated circumstances. Jihyun had every faith that the brothers would one day reconnect, but Luciel had been in the agency for such a short period of time that the likelihood of him dropping everything to see Saeran was higher than he would have liked. 

While the pair of them waited for Rika to finish Mass, Jihyun turned every page of the sketchbook, taking the time to absorb each drawing. 

“I don’t know how to draw feathers,” Saeran frowned when he reached a picture of a thrush. 

“Ah,” Jihyun had said, “feathers are difficult…”

“Do you draw very often?”

Jihyun remembered the question vividly; Saeran’s smile as warm and bright as the sunlight shining through his hair.

“I...well…” 

He was not sure how to explain such a complicated story at the best of times, much less to someone with so little knowledge of the world.

“I suppose I draw with a camera,” he settled on, which seemed to satisfy Saeran, for he sat quietly as Jihyun continued to turn the pages of his sketchbook.

The most recent pictures weren’t drawings at all, but carefully written mathematical equations in a format he didn’t recognise and Jihyun turned those pages far more slowly than the rest.

“What...are these?”

Saeran only ever drew things that he had seen, and Jihyun had not been able to fathom where he had seen such a strange language. Whatever it was, it appeared to be a secret, for he blanched and snatched the book right out of his hands, plainly unwilling to discuss the matter further.

At the time he chose not to pressure him into speaking any more, telling himself that Saeran had only recently started saying more than a mumbled ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘thank you’ and pushing him into spilling secrets might only upset him. When Rika later left Mass and patted him on the shoulder, insisting that it was ‘a secret language between brothers’, he did not wholly believe her but decided against saying so.

In retrospect, he wished he had demanded answers of both of them, insisted upon knowing exactly where Saeran had seen such letters even if such information was utterly useless in the present. Luciel remained as ignorant of his brother’s drawings as Saeran had been about his sacrifices.

“I’m sorry,” said Jihyun, cradling his drink. “I haven’t seen Saeran in a very long time.”

In his imagination, they had had this conversation well over a hundred times. Jihyun had laid the foundations for everything he wanted to say and prepared himself for the response. Luciel’s imaginary reaction was exactly as he might have expected. At first he merely stared at him, processing each of his words and opening and closing his mouth as if he meant to say something. 

“You….you promised me...!”

Jihyun could not have prepared himself for the reality, however. Luciel stared at him for only a matter of moments, before throwing back his head and laughing so loudly that several couples at different tables turned to glance their way.

“Luciel,” said Jihyun, “I…”

“It’s a joke, isn’t it?”

“I’m sorry, Luciel. I really wish it was.”

Luciel only grew louder, his laughter far more reminiscent of cries of despair.

“How long?”

“Luci-”

“How. Long.”

“Almost two y-”

Luciel did not bother to hear the end of it; he slammed his hands against the table and jumped to his feet.

“Two  _ years _ ? I asked you to look out for him!”

Jihyun wanted to tell him that he honestly had tried, to put into words the sound of breaking glass and nails against his face. Of the strange files Rika brought into his apartment after a hacker threatened the confidentiality of their guests. There was so much he wanted to say and had practised saying, but now that it actually mattered he couldn’t bring himself to.

“I’m sorry,” he said, even though it went unheard.

Long after Luciel left, snatching up his coat with the whisper that he had work to do, Jihyun continued to say he was sorry; tracing letters in condensation and forming the sounds as if they belonged to a foreign tongue. He knew it would never be enough to apologise. 

He left the bar at one in the morning, taking in the dark sky and rain soaked streets. They had not chosen the place out of any sort of sentiment and even if he had all of his sight, Jihyun would still have been disorientated. When he finally found a bus stop, he was drenched from the rain and grateful for shelter. He squeezed the excess water from his hair and pulled his phone from his pocket, calling Luciel at first and receiving no response.

There was so much he wanted to say to him, and he considered all of it as he leaned back against the wall, the evening rain and dark skies reminiscent of a different time; of bad coffee and missing glasses. Jihyun still loved the rain, even if he had come to associate it with sitting alone in his car, chilled to the core by his own wet clothes.

Jihyun’s chest grew tight at the memory and before he knew it, he was drowning again; the whisper of the rain outside resonating so clearly on his senses that it swallowed him whole. Jihyun climbed up from his seat, wrapping his arms around his body in an attempt to soothe his racing heart, though he could not shake the feeling that he was trapped, that his arms and legs were too heavy the surface lay many miles out of sight.

He reached for his phone again with shaking hands, dialling Jumin’s number as he leaned his head against the glass, rainwater trickling down his back and spine.

Jumin answered after a few rings and Jihyun sank to the ground at the sound of him calling to him from above the surface.

“V? What is it? Hello?”   


It was difficult not to pick up the concern in his voice and V lowered the phone from his ear, regretting making the call in the first place. He wanted to tell Jumin everything too, had wanted to speak honestly from the beginning, but the closer he came, the harder it was to breathe.

Jumin ended the call eventually and Jihyun stared at his phone screen, taking in the spots of rain that littered it, the time at the top.

**_2:18_ **

This time around, it was Jihyun who laughed until he cried, murmured sobs of despair indiscernible from the rain.

* * *

 

**_PRESENT DAY_ **

“Are you sure it’s her?”

It had taken a full month for Luciel to answer the phone and almost two for him to allow him into his apartment. He felt betrayed and Jihyun did not blame him. Even after three months, things were not as they were, with a silent acknowledgement on both sides that they might never be.

Jihyun refused to believe that their relationship was broken beyond repair-that the RFA by extension was permanently shattered- even if it lived on in a fractured state. There was still so much that he could do to make amends and he made a start in the most obvious place, which was transferring funds to Luciel’s agency in exchange for a full investigation into the circumstances of Rika’s disappearance and Nari’s arrival in the apartment. At first such a task appeared daunting, for Jihyun had only a few tidbits of information at hand: he knew the location of the strange castle she had built thanks to what few personal belongings and documents scattered about his apartment when she left. He had pored over all of them in her absence, desperate for an answer that ultimately never came. Even after he followed her to the address, desperate to return things to the way they were, he gained very little in the way of answers, answers that eluded him even when he learned of the stranger in their midst and went back to the site. Everything he did know lay in hypotheticals and possibilities, with little evidence in either direction.

Luciel was only too happy to delve into the investigation, convinced that his brother was some sort of hostage and eager to know exactly what had happened to him in the years they had spent apart. He grew more and more erratic with every new piece of data they uncovered, insisting on multiple occasions that they send in sleeper agents and strike teams, all of which disappeared within days of their arrival at the castle. There was still so little they knew for certain, with new leads arriving every day and answers to questions they had yet to ask. Whether it was strange pamphlets and missing students or guests to previous RFA parties, it grew increasingly clear that they could not see the wood for the trees.

One of their earliest points of research, and the reason their activities remained a secret from the rest of the RFA, was Nari Song. No matter how much she had helped them or how genuine she seemed to be, she was still an outsider with unknown motivations. No matter how innocent her social media and criminal record appeared to be, data could not account for personal beliefs or her every acquaintance. If she did belong to the mysterious cult in the castle, getting close to Jumin made a great deal of sense. 

He did not want to believe she had malicious intentions and the longer she remained in their organisation, the harder it was to accept. She was only an outsider now in the loosest sense of the term and while it was surely inappropriate to presume he knew her intimately, her presence and personality were something beyond familiar. He thought of her when he tasted bad wine or caught a glimpse of something shimmering. In a way, her being a mole was comforting, for it would mean his fascination with her was deliberate as opposed to inappropriate.

The moment he received the strange picture of her, Jihyun’s immediate instinct was to go to Luciel’s apartment, throwing himself through the door without much in the way of a greeting. Luciel had been in something of a heated conversation with his handler, who was growing increasingly agitated with the state of Luciel’s living environment.

When it came to Vanderwood, Jihyun knew very little, gleaning only the faintest sense of his personality from Luciel’s emails and what few direct correspondences he had had with the agency as his legal guardian. It was Vanderwood who took the time to reorganise Luciel’s increasingly scattered thoughts and obscure data into colour coded folders; Vanderwood who groaned into his phone every time they sent a strike team; Vanderwood to break the news they were missing.

It was also Vanderwood who turned Jihyun’s phone over in his hands, zooming in and out of the picture.

“You don’t think it’s her?”

Vanderwood shrugged, taking in the picture one last time before passing it back.

“Hostage situations are complicated,” he said. “It could be someone in costume...a mannequin…”

“That’s a lot of trouble to go to.”

“Sometimes things go wrong,” said Vanderwood, words muffled as he stuffed a cigarette between his lips. “If the victim puts up too much of a fight or the kidnappers use too much f-”

The blood drained from Jihyun’s face and Vanderwood seemed to notice, sighing lightly and continuing to rummage through his pockets for a lighter.

“I’m sure that isn’t what happened here,” he said. “But it’s a possibility.”

In truth, Jihyun had considered that possibility already on the way over. Every time he got caught in traffic or stopped at a red light, he remembered Nari’s lifeless features. If she truly was dead, then he shared more than a fraction of the blame.

Jihyun ran his fingers through his hair and shook his head and he went back inside Luciel’s apartment, where the sound of his fingers against the keyboard was the only thing to break the silence. Luciel had not fully explained what or where he was investigating, only that he had taken Jihyun’s phone and demanded to be left in peace.

“Ah, you’re back,” he said without looking, “come and take a look. I think I found something.”

“Oh?”

As Jihyun approached, he sat up straight, reaching for the can of soda to his right.

“I traced the number,” he said. “We were right! It’s a burner phone and I couldn’t find out any information about the person it belongs to.”

“So that’s the end of the trail,” sighed Jihyun, only for Luciel to look quite offended and glare at him despite having a mouthful of Dr Pepper.

“For a regular person, yes,” he said, gulping the soda down and wiping his lips with his sleeve. “You underestimate my abilities!”

He maximised one of the tabs on his screen and Jihyun squinted at the coding. He did not understand them, but they were not nearly as unfamiliar as when he saw them in Saeran’s sketchbook.

“Whoever is using this phone left it switched on,” said Luciel. “I was able to track it down to one singular location.”

Jihyun took two steps back as he turned in his chair and rolled across the room to the makeshift workspace they had been using. It was little more than a table, originally intended as a dining table when Luciel had moved into his apartment. At the time Jihyun had laughed about it, telling Luciel that he no longer had an excuse to skip meals, though Luciel so rarely used it that it became a stacking space for documents and empty chip packets. More recently, it had become the stacking space for their investigation, the varnish hidden by maps, empty cans and sometimes even angry notes from Vanderwood, who tidied it every few days.

Luciel rummaged through the papers without looking, dragging out a map as if by memory. Originally Jihyun had taken the map from Rika’s belongings, using it to trace her long after she was gone, though now it was a mess of scribbles, post-its  and hastily drawn squiggles. Whenever they discovered a new missing person or seemingly connected sequence of events, they highlighted the location on the map. It was depressing to watch the transformation of the map from sparse to chaotic as a result of everything they had found.

Luciel used the can in his hand to weight down one of the corners of the paper before rolling it out with his fingers.

“There,” he said, pointing to the largest circle, which corresponded to a castle.

“I don’t understand,” said Jihyun. “I thought you had a new lead.”

“I  _ do _ ,” said Luciel, leaning over to snatch up a piece of paper from his printer. “Look at this.”

“This,” said Jihyun, “this is Nari’s schedule.”

“Mhmm. Does anything strike you about it?”

“Well, according to this she had an appointment this morning.”

“Go on.”

Jihyun frowned, reading over the description over and over, realisation striking him late.

“You think this is them, don’t you?”

“I do,” said Luciel, suddenly smug. “That appointment was added late last night by Nari’s assistant, whose number is in the C&R database. She...or rather, her phone...is in the same location.”

“If Nari planned to be at the castle from the beginning…”

“Why have her assistant add the appointment at all?”

“Do you think they’re in cahoots?”

“Not necessarily,” said Luciel. “They might both have been deceived. If you had to pick a foolproof method of getting to Nari, why not go through someone who knows nothing of the RFA or this organisation? We know that they lured Nari into Rika’s apartment only a few months ago. It wouldn’t be difficult for them to convince her assistant that the appointment was legitimate.”

The idea that Nari might be innocent left Jihyun’s knees buckling and Luciel smiled sadly at the sight. He turned to storm out, only for Luciel to catch his arm.

“Hey,” he said, “don’t go doing anything stupid now.”

“I have to go to her,” whispered Jihyun, rubbing the bridge of his nose in an attempt to brush off the feel of Rika’s hands cupping his face. 

“We don’t know that Nari is in any danger,” said Luciel. “Going to the castle might put everyone at risk.”

His eyes fell to the floor, a quiet sort of anger in his face as he tightened his grip on Jihyun’s arm.

“You were always the one to tell me that,” he said. “Every time I sent in a team after Saeran, you were always the one to warn me it was the wrong thing to do. Why is it only now that you’ve changed your mind? You  _ know _ going there is suicide.”

Jihyun slowly pulled his arm out of Luciel’s grip, the memory of Rika’s hands against his face replaced by heavy rain. He said nothing as he left the room, barely paying attention to Luciel jumping up from his desk and calling out to him, realisation slowly setting in.

“V! V!”

* * *

 

It took at least half an hour for Nari to set aside her phone. Her hands trembled; each of Jumin’s words carved into her memory. 

_ Perhaps I only loved you because I thought you were something more. _

_ Perhaps you were always meant to be a stranger to the RFA. _

_ I think… that if I had not proposed to you so publicly, in such a way, I might never have married you. _

In the hours that followed, she drifted in and out of sleep, dreaming of empty party halls and Jumin’s silhouette leaving her behind. She was grateful when a distraction arrived in the form of someone knocking at her door, doubly so when Juyeon was the one to step inside, pulling a silver food trolley in behind her. 

“Juyeon,” she said, relief washing over her, “I…”

“You really scared me, you know that?” 

Her tone was serious, but the smile on her face said otherwise as she pulled the trolley over to the bed and sat down beside her.

“Making me look bad,” she muttered, “I work hard on your schedules you know; if you were tired you should have told me.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realise anything was wrong until…”

“I’m just glad we have Ray here; he really came through while you were asleep.”

Nari recalled the damp cloth he had dabbed at her forehead; the number he had written down for her.

_ Ah _ , she thought, trying to sit up as Juyeon lifted a bowl of soup from the trolley, only to flop backwards,  _ it must be dinnertime. _

“Please tell me you at least got to have a tour.”

The thought of Juyeon and Driver Kim waiting in stunned silence for her to wake up was almost too difficult to bear.

“I did,” laughed Juyeon, taking a spoonful of soup and blowing on it gently before reaching out to Nari’s lips. “If you don’t choose this place for the wedding ceremony, I will.”

Compared to her worries about Jumin, the stress of wedding planning seemed like child’s play, and Nari stayed quiet as she accepted the spoon. Considering recent events, she wondered if there would ever be a wedding at all.

“Something wrong?” Said Juyeon, no doubt noticing her grim expression.

“Ah, no, don’t worry about it. I was just thinking about everything I need to do when I get home.”

In retrospect, saying such a thing in front of the person responsible for her schedule was not the best idea. Juyeon’s response was enthusiastically list which interviews and photoshoots she could rearrange or even cancel, leaving Nari to shake her head in embarrassment. It really wasn’t necessary and somewhat humiliating to even consider.

“Juyeon,” she said, wanting more than anything else to ask if she had talked to Jumin; wishing beyond all hope that her response would be to shrug and tell her that he was the same as always. She never got the chance to ask, though, for her phone began to ring.

“Oh,” said Juyeon, “would you like me to get that for you? It could be Mr Han.”

Nari considered how mortifying it already was that she needed her assistant to spoon feed her and shook her head.

“No,” she said, laughing in an artificial manner that she reserved for television. “I’m sure it’s not important.”

 

* * *

“Come on...come on….”

_ Hello, this is Nari Song. For business enquiries please contact my assistant at- _

Jihyun did not know whether to be relieved or not that Nari was not answering. If she was in immediate danger, there were several reasons picking up her phone was not the best idea. Still, he needed to hear her, needed confirmation that she was still alive and in one piece. He would settle for her laughing down the line at him or getting annoyed at how many times he had failed to get through, anything to avoid his own imagination.

He hung up with a sigh and tossed his phone onto the passenger seat, fixing his gaze on the surrounding traffic as he hit the accelerator.


	5. Chapter 5

It had been many years since Rika had had a good night’s sleep. It did not seem to matter that every bed she had ever slept in had soft pillows and warm covers; excitement, dread and sometimes even misery kept her from resting for very long. Now, more than ever, anticipation kept her wide awake, leaning forward in her chair as Believers C607 and A415 ran a soft brush through her hair and filled her wine glass. 

In truth, she had no taste for wine; the iron aftertaste of most reds left her nauseous and reminded of blood. Whenever she drank it was not for enjoyment, but nostalgia, to indulge in the memory of veined cheeses, philosophical conversations and Jumin pouring her a glass. She understood none of the terms he used, from tannins to aeration to glycerin, though the passion in his voice was unmistakable and she grew fond of them for that alone.

The name “Nari Song” meant nothing to her either; she knew who it belonged to, though its syllables were strange and unfamiliar. Rika would lie flat on her back and imagine the stranger she so often saw on television, contemplating how little they actually had in common. The only parts of Nari she recognised in herself were the ones she invented: the warm smile she had practised so often in a mirror, the words she had crafted for every occasion. Rika played recordings of her over and over, contemplating Nari Song in ways she had only ever previously afforded herself. 

She had expected to understand her more the moment she saw her, only to find herself unable to do anything but stare as she lifted her into her arms. She was smaller in person, hair lighter and skin darker, more beautiful in life than any given screen could show. Rika did not know what to make of her; picking up a familiar talc scent on her clothes and hair that reminded her of an incident in Jumin's penthouse. She spilled hot tea on him by accident and, ever the gentleman, he refused each of her apologies, leaving her alone with V as he went to change. He returned in a clean shirt, the same powder scent lingering about his person that she recognised on Nari.

During the course of one day, she had invited herself into the control room many times without warning, desperate for updates on the stranger in their midst. It was difficult to hide her curiosity and for the most part she did not bother to try. 

She did not understand the other woman but she wanted to; needed to know exactly how different they were. What manner of shadows lurked in her heart?

“You’ve done well, Ray,” she said, a warm smile crossing her features as she scrolled through the photos on Nari’s phone. “Everything is going according to plan.”

Ever since Believer C607 had placed it in her hands, Rika had carefully examined every fragment of data on Nari’s phone: each and every photograph, every text message, every memo. Any sliver of personality, any hint that they had something in common.

“You will be kind to her, won’t you, Saviour?”

Rika paused from swiping through the photos to examine him, face barely inches from the floor and shoulders trembling.

“Kind?” She smirked, waving off Believer  A415’s attempt at brushing her hair. “I mean to make her beautiful; to free her from the lies of V and the RFA.”

Rika stood up from her seat, pulling a night gown around her shoulders as she crossed the room to pass Nari's phone back to C607. She was sure she had memorised every photo; every angle of her smile.

“She is a lost soul,” she said, more to herself than any other, “consumed by pain... by fear. The RFA have polluted her into believing she needs them, that they understand her enough to love her. I will show her true loneliness; prove to her that she is more than her fears. I will shatter her and rearrange her harder, stronger and more beautiful than before. I will make her worthy of paradise; bend and break her until she understands what it is to be alive. And then? Then we shall be beautiful people in a world free of suffering.”

She turned back to face the three acolytes, each left in silence at the power of her words. She took in A415’s shaking hands, C607’s white knuckles as they gripped the phone, Ray scarcely daring to draw breath. She laughed, clapping her hands together and clasping them at her chest.

“I can think of nothing kinder than that,” she said, happiness bleeding into her words.

“Thank you, Saviour,-” Ray stammered, voice quivering alongside his shoulders. “You will take much better care of her than I can.”

Rika picked up on the bitterness of his words even if he did not. Ray’s own interest with Nari was a fascinating development to say the least. Even if the other woman rejected the paradise, it was something of a relief to know that she may have another use.

“C607,” she said, dismissing Ray with a glance. “Did you do as I asked?”

“Yes, Saviour,” they cried out, setting aside the wine bottle to fall at her feet. “He should find it at any minute.”

On the outside Rika appeared calm, though on the inside she was anything but. Her heart raced from adrenaline, her hands trembled, clammy from sweat.

“Excellent,” she said, reaching down to pat C607’s head and dishevelling their hood. “And now we wait.”

 

* * *

 

Jumin left the office early that evening, without a word to Assistant Kang or acknowledgement of the sixty seven e-mails sitting in his inbox. Driver Kim was elsewhere and if he was honest, Jumin usually avoided travelling with his replacement, though when he took into account his present circumstances, it was a sacrifice he was more than willing to make.

He arrived at the penthouse in under twenty minutes, avoiding the evening rush hour and barely saying a word to the driver before rushing into the lift. With any luck, Nari might still be there, standing by the window where he could not see her face.

It was empty when he got there, though, save for Elizabeth on the kitchen counter. The moment he crossed the threshold, she jumped back to the floor, a piece of paper fluttering to the ground behind her. At first he paid it little attention, shrugging off his jacket and making a beeline for the guest bedroom.

“Nari!” He poked his head around the door. “Are you-“

It was unrealistic for her to stay in the same room all day; he knew that even as he lingered in the doorway, scanning every corner of the room for a sign she had been there at all.

She wasn't in the master bedroom either; the room all but untouched from when he left that morning. His first instinct was to reach for the wardrobe doors, breathing a sigh of relief at the clothes inside. 

He returned to the kitchen to pick up the fallen note, Elizabeth winding herself around his legs as he crouched down to the floor.

_ Jumin _

_ I’m sorry to leave a note like this, but this will be your last memory of me. I used to love you and these past few months have been some of the most exciting of my life, but I realise that the distance between us is too great. We are missing something and I understand now that we could never be happy. I need a partner who understands me emotionally and you need someone who won’t hold you back. _

_ This is best for the both of us. _

_ Don’t look for me.  _

_ -Nari _

Jumin read the note several times before reaching for his cell phone. It took him only a couple of moments to be connected, hands shaking as he leaned into the kitchen counter.

“Hello, this is Jumin Han,” he said, Elizabeth bumping her head against his arm and completely ignoring all of his prior insistences that she not sit there. “Put me through to security.”

 

* * *

 

After Juyeon left, Nari stretched her legs and made an attempt to stand up, considering that if she was ever going to call V back, she would have to move to an area of the castle with better reception. As mortifying as it had been to have Juyeon come in with food, she _had_  mentioned that she had been able to make an outgoing call, even if Nari realised the significance of the offhand comment only after she had gone.

As she gripped the bedside cabinet, legs wobbling out of dizziness, she reassured herself with the knowledge that Juyeon and Driver Kim could not be far away. It was evening, after all, and Juyeon had made it quite clear that they were going to stay in the castle overnight too. There were only so many places a castle could house them and with any luck they would be on the same floor.

The moment she stood up straight, she regretted it, reaching for her forehead as she attempted to steady her footing. As the fainting spell passed, she took a deep breath and glanced around the room, hobbling over to the desk, where someone had arranged her coat and shoes. She pulled them back on in the hopes that she might appear even slightly professional when she managed to talk to Driver Kim. Perhaps, now that her head was slightly better, he would even take her home.

Nari turned back to the bed and rummaged through the bedclothes in search of her phone, grabbing at the pillows and finally dropping to her knees to reach under the bed. She had had her phone in her hand only recently and was sure she would have noticed if it fell to the floor, yet she could not find it matter where she looked.

With a huff, she sat up and contemplated where next to look, still somewhat deep in thought when someone knocked at her door.

It was Ray, clutching a bundle of carefully folded nightclothes and towels. He smiled softly as he caught her eye, crossing the room to place them on the desk near her bed.

“I hope I haven’t disturbed you,” he said. “I just-” 

Only then did he notice her sitting there, dressed for the outdoors.

“Is everything alright?”

“It’s nothing,” said Nari, reaching a hand to the bed and using it as a support as she got to her feet. “I was just thinking about making a phone call, but it seems like I’ve lost my phone.”

Ray frowned and took a step back, a fleeting glance around the room before breaking into his usual grin.

“What do you like for breakfast?”

“Pardon?”

It was arguably the last question she might have expected and the confusion must have transferred to her face, for Ray flushed a bright pink.

“A-ah, I’m sorry,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure that when I make you breakfast in the morning, it’s to your liking.”

Nari had not considered the possibility of staying for breakfast. As a matter of fact, she had hoped to be home before Jumin woke up, leaving them time to speak before he went to the office.

“Oh, uh, don’t worry about it,” she said. “I’m planning on an early start and I wouldn’t want to put you out.”

“Oh, it’s no hassle,” said Ray, looking shocked at the very notion. “It’s a pleasure to have you here. I’ll have it ready for whenever you’d like!”

“I couldn’t possibly… I’m sure you have other duties and I wouldn’t want to-”

“Not at all!” Ray cried out, rushing over and clasping her hand in his. “Having you here...it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to us!”

His grip tightened, eyes suddenly bright with what Nari could only assume was determination.

“It’s the best thing to ever happen to  _ me _ ! Please, if your room is not to your liking or there’s something you want to eat, please tell me okay? I’ll make it right.”

Nari had spent the last few months attending afternoon teas with high society wives; she had visited restaurants with dishes on the menu that she neither recognised nor could pronounce, had been offered champagne flutes from designers who deliberately mispronounced their own names. All of them had gone out of their way to appease her for no other reason than the ring on her finger, a fact she had made peace with long ago. She knew it was nothing personal, that those constant efforts to please her were business and nothing more, and so she slipped her hand from Ray's without a second thought.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “I’m very happy here. Actually, I’m not sure I ever want to leave.”

It was a joke, even if neither of them laughed.

“I’m so happy to hear that,” said Ray. “And I’m sure our leader will too! I’ll-“

They joy in his eyes was undeniable and Nari came to wonder exactly how many guests they had previously hosted. How empty had the castle been that her appreciation left him on the brink of tears?

“I’ll tell her right away! Please let me know if there's anything more I can do for you!

He scurried out of the room, so quickly that he fumbled with the door handle several times before throwing it open. Nari laughed at his enthusiasm and then crossed the room to examine the nightgown he had brought her; wincing at the elaborate frills and ribbons across its collar.

She set them down, meaning to grab the towel and head into the adjoining bathroom to wash her face, only to spot her cell phone nestled under the adjacent vase. She snatched it up and tapped the power button, convinced beyond all belief that she had searched there only a few minutes before. 

“Surely…” She said aloud, examining the pile of clothes Ray had brought her, another possibility crossing her mind.

She laughed it off, though, the ridiculousness of it obvious even to herself. What possible reason did Ray or anyone else in the castle have to hide her phone?

Sighing, she rubbed her temples and sat back on the bed, lamenting her own overactive imagination and the fact that she really, really ought to get some sleep.

 

* * *

 

He loved her.

It was an unusual thing to consider, though Ray did not know how else to explain his feelings. There was nothing he did not wish to know about Nari Song; no side of her that he did not wish to see. The Saviour told him once that love was devotion- to love a person’s demons the best of all- and up until then, he had accepted that only she loved him. There was something different about Nari, though; something about her smile and the way she spoke that left him desperate to please her. Nari did not know him well enough to love his demons, but her kind words led him to wonder.

If he had his own way, he would never leave her room; staying there forever and discovering everything about her. In his wildest dreams, he had never expected she would tell him she wanted to stay.

It took everything he had not to run to the Saviour and tell her everything; to go over every conversation they had had and insist that she stay in the castle forever.

Even if he had started to run, though, he would not have gotten very far. Believer C607 waited for him at the end of the hallway, picking at a loose thread on her sleeve. Ever since the Saviour had assigned her a magenta blazer, she had taken any opportunity to cast her robes aside, smiling cruelly at any other believer she happened to pass. The magenta uniforms were reserved to Believers of note, who had proven themselves to the Saviour, even if their invitation to the eternal paradise remained in doubt.

When she saw him coming, she bounced forward, eager for news that he did not want to give her. C607 cared more for the Saviour’s praise and Nari’s pats to the head than proving herself worthy of any sort of paradise. She demanded the attentions from both while caring for neither and Ray had very few kind words for her.

“You messed up!” 

“I did no such thing,” she said, in a tone that almost perfectly captured a shrug of the shoulders. “You put it back, didn’t you?”

Ray recalled dropping the clean towels and pyjamas on the desk in Nari’s room, sliding her phone out from the fabric and positioning it in the furthest corner. No one had asked C607 to take Nari’s phone, but she had rushed to the Saviour anyhow, eager to show her the photographs and emails contained within. Ray had expected her to scold C607 for compromising the entire operation, but it seemed her interest in Nari was stronger than he thought. It took him only a matter of minutes to unlock it, frowning behind the Saviour’s back as she handed C607 a wineglass.

“She’s starting to get suspicious,” he said, “I barely managed to return it in time.”

“But you did?”

”Of course I did,” he snapped. “Risk compromising all of the Saviour’s hard work?  _ My  _ hard work?”

C607 caught the insult and folded her arms, taking a couple of steps closer.

“ _ Your _ hard work? Huh. That’s news to me. I don’t remember you doing much except for sitting at a computer screen and  _ tap tap tap.” _

She lifted her hands and pretended to type and Ray clenched his fists, knowing she wanted nothing more than to provoke him into doing something that would leave him in trouble with the Saviour. They were the same rank, after all, and he no longer had the authority to issue orders.

He had never seen C607 upset, let alone overwhelmed with despair, as was fitting of acolytes and the more she laughed at him, the more he found himself even more excited for the day paradise finally came, and she had only her vanity for company. 

"For eternal paradise," he said, bowing his head and quietly dismissing himself, C607's words playing on in his imagination like piano keys. 

She gave him a triumphant smile before reaching for her phone, no doubt believing their small encounter to be an equally small victory, and Ray made sure to remember it. He wondered which would be more satisfying: the everlasting party or C607 sobbing in the dark. 

 

* * *

 

By something of a coincidence, agent 707’s phone began to ring only a matter of minutes later. Unlike C607, however, he made no attempt to answer and instead reached for more soda as it hummed on the edge of his desk.

“Is there a reason you’re ignoring this? It could be the Boss.”

“It’s not the Boss,” sighed Seven. “It’s something much worse.”

Vanderwood raised an eyebrow as he took in the display, before tapping the answer button and tossing it to Seven as one might a hot potato. Seven cried out in shock and betrayal as he caught it, quickly pushing it to his ear.

“Welcome to Giogio’s Pizza! Can I take your order?”

“Amusing,” said Jumin. “What is the quality of your foie gras?”

“Uh…”

Seven blinked and searched the room helplessly for an answer.  Under different circumstances he might have made a joke and followed up with lengthy descriptions of impossible dishes, but having spent hours combing data of varying sorts, he did not have the energy.

“Jumin,” he sighed. “What can I do for you?”

In truth, he knew  _ exactly _ why Jumin had called, which was precisely the reason he had not wanted to answer the phone to begin with. 

“I believe Nari is in some kind of trouble,” said Jumin, without hesitation or a hint of doubt.

“What makes you say that?”

“She’s not here and there was a letter on our kitchen counter, saying goodbye.”

“A...letter?”

Seven’s eyes narrowed and he stretched out his free hand for a pen, only to knock over his soda and earn a frosty glare from Vanderwood.

“I will read it to you now,” said Jumin and Seven scribbled each word down, reading and rereading them and crossing out the spelling mistakes he made by accident.

“This is not Nari’s handwriting,” said Jumin, at last. “And if she left forever, I don’t understand why she left all of her clothes behind.”

Seven wasn’t sure which was worse; allowing Jumin to believe a lie, or the mental image of him ordering his own men to their deaths at the castle, which was by all accounts the likeliest outcome. 

“There’s something else,” said Jumin.

"Oh?"

“I believe that whoever left the note is an employee of C&R.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dun... dun...   
> dun?


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **This chapter contains references to torture**

_There’s something else. I believe that whoever left the note is an employee of C &R._ **  
**

“C&R?”

Suddenly, Seven’s mouth was dry and he mourned the soda Vanderwood scrubbed from the floor.

“I asked my security team for the full details of who came and went to the apartment today and the last people to leave were Nari, Juyeon and housekeeping, in that order.”

“I’ll look into it!” He cried out, hoping his enthusiasm masked his concern. “Don’t worry about---”

He hung up before Jumin could even respond and hopped out of his chair to gather together as many maps and files as he could carry.

“Hey, hey,” protested Vanderwood, “what are you-”  
  
He flinched as Seven threw car keys in his direction.

“Come on! We have to go.”  
  
“Go? Go where?”

Seven frowned over the top of the mountain of research in his arms.

“If there’s a mole in C&R, we need to warn V. There’s no telling exactly how much they might know or use to their advantage...it could jeopardize the entire investigation,” he said. “There’s a safe house not too far from the castle, so come on, we need to hurry!”

Vanderwood frowned, glancing from the messy floor to his flustered expression. Neither mentioned that the safehouse Seven referred to came into their possession in the earlier days of the Mint Eye investigation, nor that every single team to use it was MIA.

“Fine,” he said. “But just so you know, this means the photographer guy owes us double.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Jihyun arrived at the castle boundary at midnight, which was strangely apt the more he thought about it. The outhouse he had previously used as a camp had changed a good deal in the last few months, which he supposed made sense. It belonged to the cult in the castle, after all, perhaps intended as a sentry post or something far more sinister. Either way, the last time he saw it it contained little more than a handful of water bottles, a worn bible and a pamphlet or two. He had been careful not to disturb the shelves much on his last visit, sniffing at the water in the bottles before taking a tentative sip. Whether or not it was clean was anyone’s guess, but at the very least it didn’t make him sick. Now that he was back, it had a few new boxes filled with musty uniforms and somebody’s shoes. In the far corner was a crate of wine bottles, though he recognised none of the labels.

Assuming the inner workings of the castle had not changed too much, the guard rotation changed at five o’clock every morning. He did not have the luxury of time, though, and after taking the tarpaulin from the back seat of his car and stretching it across until he was satisfied its dark shape was almost invisible in the forest, he shrugged on one of the newer looking sets of robes from one of the outhouse boxes.

He reached for his phone before leaving, sighing at its low battery and reaching to dial Nari’s number. He paused, though, taking in each of his missed calls from both Luciel and Jumin. Even considering the best case scenario: that Luciel was the only person looking for him, Nari’s phone was not at all compromised and she was being kept in a relatively safe environment, he did not know her well enough to presume her response to the revelation she was in danger. The worst case scenario, on the other hand, was one he did not want to entertain: that he was being traced by multiple hackers and had been for some time, Nari’s phone was compromised and had been bugged since her death.

He threw his phone into the river, watching it disappear into the darkness as he pulled up the hood of his robes.

A few hours from then everything would be changed forever, and though the optimism of it was clear even to him, he hoped it was for the better.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Ordinarily, Jumin took his good instincts for granted; he was confident making increasingly difficult business decisions and planning the future of C&R in an ever changing climate. Items and industries that dominated their accounts in previous years no longer held any value and keeping the company ahead of the game was as much about intuition as it was careful research.

When it came to Nari, though, he felt scrambled; every negative possibility equally as plausible as the next. Deep in his gut he knew there was something strange about Nari’s disappearance. Perhaps she was in danger, or had left him the note only as an afterthought.

It seemed almost distasteful to prefer the scenario where she was in danger, and yet he spent the night waiting for a callback from Luciel that ultimately never came.

After their argument, he had scooped up Nari’s engagement ring, meaning to give it back to her when they next spoke. In her absence, though, he placed it on his bedside table and hoped that when he woke up it would all be a bad dream.

Come the next morning, Luciel had not returned his call and any to Nari went straight to answer machine. As much as he wanted to dial her over and over again until she answered, the off chance that she genuinely meant to leave held him back.

He hoped he was wrong, considered that as he put on his tie the next morning. Before leaving for work, he put the engagement ring in his pocket, smoothing his fingers across the metal in the backseat of his car.

It took him half the journey to draft a message and even then it was only half complete:

_We need to talk._

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Nari woke early, the time on her phone screen one that would ordinarily leave her groaning and pulling the covers over her face. This time, though, she all but flew out of bed, changing into her clothes from the previous day and carefully folding the itchy nightdress. To say it was a relief to be out of it was an understatement; as she rinsed her face in the bathroom mirror, she saw that her neck and collarbones were red and blotchy from the irritation.

After dressing for the day, she dialed Driver Kim’s number and sighed when he did not respond. She doubted he was still asleep, for that particular time of day perfectly matched Jumin’s daily departure for the office. Juyeon did not answer either and Nari sank onto the bed, logging in and out of the messenger to no avail. She remembered the number Ray had written down for her as an afterthought and for a moment or two considered calling him; he had, after all, offered her an ear morning or night. It was very early in the morning, though, and surely he had a home to go to.

By something of a coincidence, he answered her question not long afterwards; barreling into her room with a tea trolley while she scribbled notes in her organiser. She had several appointments that afternoon that quite possibly needed rearranging, though the scent of Darjeeling made it more difficult than usual to pay much thought to problems beyond the castle walls.

“Good morning,” said Ray, “did you sleep well?”

He lifted the teapot into his hands as he said so, only turning to pour the tea when she nodded.

“I feel much better today,” she said, accepting the cup he offered. “I’ll be out of your hair in no time!”

It was good tea; its warmth spreading from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. At first she did not notice Ray’s expression of conflict.

“About that,” he said, “I received word from your driver this morning.”

“Is he alright?”

“He will be better soon,” he said, “don’t you worry!”

He seemed reluctant to tell her any more than that and, as a consequence, her imagination ran wild. Suddenly all she could think of was Driver Kim standing in Jumin’s office describing the events of the previous day; Driver Kim bed bound with the flu; Driver Kim receiving word of an emergency in C&R. Each possibility was worse than the next and Nari cupped her hands around her teacup, pushing each dark thought to the back of her mind.

Even so, she did not know what Ray meant by ‘better’. 

“Our lady meant for you to take breakfast in the garden today,” said Ray, turning to her with a grin. “I wasn’t sure of your preferences, so I filled in a few of the blanks myself.”

“Will your boss be coming to eat with us?”

She had seen so little of the castle that she found herself increasingly curious of it. Were all of the rooms like her own? What sort of person was in charge? All she knew of the owner came from the few references Ray had made. Those small details were not particularly helpful in forming either an opinion or mental image, however, and Nari feared she had invented so much of the owner and her personality that the reality would leave her disappointed.

Ray had not expected her to ask such a question; it was written across his face. Almost immediately she wished she had never asked, for the owner surely had a busy schedule too and her overnight stay had inevitably left a few noses out of joint.

“Ah,” she said, “it doesn’t matter. I’ll grab my coat.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

When it came to his son, Chief Han liked to think that he knew him the best. Business was in the boy’s DNA and even as a child he had understood the proper order of proceedings for any given eventuality. His engagement to a commoner had come as a shock to everyone, Chief Han most of all.

Sometimes he forgot the circumstances of Jumin’s birth; forgot Jieun. Before Jumin, she had been the person he thought he knew best of all, only to learn otherwise when it was far too late.

“What was it you wanted to speak to me about?” He asked, sitting back in his chair to properly observe the man opposite. Jumin had skipped most pleasantries when they arrived at the restaurant, not even bothering to read the menu. In the end, Chief Han was the one to order coffee and light refreshments, wondering why he had been summoned for a meeting on such late notice.

“I wanted to talk about Nari,” said Jumin, his own cup untouched.

Retrospectively, he should have seen it coming. He had learned the hard way how difficult weddings were to organise, especially when the bride did not come from a privileged background as he had. More than one of his brides to be had ended their relationship without ever making it down the aisle, in part because of the influx of offers from media outlets and other companies. With this in mind, he had taken Jumin’s engagement as an opportunity to pursue every business deal and proposal he had previously dismissed. If the unreasonably short deadline didn’t strain their relationship, the more ridiculous of his suggestions surely would.

So far, Nari had not only been flexible, but almost excessively so. Chief Han knew it was only a matter of time before his requests became intolerable and doubtlessly that was why his son had insisted on a meeting. Perhaps the girl had already left him and his strategy had finally blossomed into fruition.

“I see,” he said, helping himself to coffee. “How is my future daughter in law?”

“Don’t speak as if you don’t know,” said Jumin, “I expected this sort of behaviour from my mother, not you.”

That was a low blow and Chief Han grimaced into his coffee cup before setting it down.

“I did not expect for my son to resort to petty insults,” he said, “and yet here we are.”

“As far as I can see, you have two options,” said Jumin, shrugging off the barb. “You give my wedding a wide berth and we start again with a clean slate.”

“Or?”

“Or I leave my post at C&R.”

Only then did Chief Han realise exactly how far he had underestimated his son. It was true that business was in Jumin’s DNA, but in his arrogance he had forgotten that outmaneuvering people was too. He had no idea if Jumin was serious or calling his bluff and that uncertainty was dangerous, as he was almost certainly aware.

Suddenly Chief Han was thirty eight again, with clammy hands and a fluttering stomach, staring down the mother of his son. It had been a long time since anyone backed him into a corner in such a fashion and for Jumin to do so twice in only a matter of months left him oddly sentimental, a fact that must have transferred to his face.

“Is something funny?”

“No, no,” he said, “it’s just that the way you said that...it reminded me of someone else.”

* * *

 

 

Only after he arrived at the castle did Jihyun realise any of the flaws in his plan. He had not thought very far beyond his arrival, heart thumping with adrenaline at the thought of breaking Nari out of one cell or another.

A lot had changed since his last visit to the castle, though. The staff he once knew by identification number had since been promoted, whether to a different division or rank, and many of the chambers that had been barricaded off were now fully realised. Worse, from what few tidbits of information he could glean from other acolytes, the saviour had devoted most of her attentions to the control room and a guest on the third floor.

The gardens were new; all manner of brightly coloured flowers where before there had been plain earth. There were mazes and archways, fountains carved out of stone and pathways so well worn that it was difficult to believe how recent they actually were.

Halfway through, towards the castle, he rested a hand against a tree and sucked in one breath and then two. His chest was tight, his mind foggy, and worst of all he did not know where he planned to go next.

No one he had talked to knew much about the mysterious guest on the third floor, only that she was important to the cause and being treated as a VIP. The obvious answer was Nari and Jihyun did not know if he should be relieved or not. Not one of the answers he had received confirmed or denied her involvement in the organisation and, as foolhardy as it was, he refused to accept it. There had to be a better explanation than Nari betraying the RFA.

He had thought about confronting Rika; begging and bartering for Nari’s life. Luciel’s words, though, were clear in his mind, that his plan was reckless to the point of suicide. Jihyun supposed he agreed with him, but there again, none of his imagined attempts at saving Nari ended with him going home. At some point, he had made peace with the fact that the chances of him leaving alive were slim to none.

If he was completely honest, he was ready to die; ready to rest his body and his conscience.

As if in response, someone called out from the garden.

“This place,” they said. “It must take you such a long time to maintain it!”

It took everything he had not to run to her the moment he saw her; Nari, her hair loose about her shoulders, hugging herself as she walked the main path to the pavilion in the center. Two steps ahead of her was a man in magenta clothes, pointing out individual flower beds as he walked.

“These are Lily of the Valley,” he said, stopping to kneel and lift one by the root. “Here-“

He twisted the stalk in his fingers as she turned to see, forming a simple chain that he lowered onto her head. Nari had not been expecting it, that much was clear and she took two steps back at his touch.

“Perfect,” said the man in magenta, turning to the side and giving Jihyun a clear view of his face. He had bleached his hair and his eyes were a different shade, but it was unmistakably him: Saeran. 

“Oh,” said Nari, reaching up to the flowers in her hair, “I...thank you!”

Jihyun had no idea what Saeran was doing in the castle, nor what exactly they had planned for Nari. She did not appear to be in any immediate danger, though, which left one possibility.

A possibility that became far more apparent as someone behind him clapped a hand to his shoulder.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Breakfast that morning was no less extravagant than the one from the day before. Someone, possibly Ray, had assembled a feast under a large pavilion in the center of the garden, surrounded by sweet smelling rose bushes.

Nari wished she had several more heads so that she could better admire the flowers, and her heart skipped a beat when Ray placed a crown of lilies on her head. She was not sure how to thank him for the gesture and stammered a thank you before approaching the breakfast table.

“Is something the matter?” Asked Ray, noticing her hesitant steps.

“Oh it’s...it’s nothing,” she said, blushing a bright red at her own transparency. “I just thought Juyeon would be here.”

The prospect of her own increasingly complicated schedule and the absence of Driver Kim left her more desperate than ever to see Juyeon. Perhaps Juyeon had passed on a message to either Jumin or C&R already. At minimum she must have gotten in touch with everyone they had arranged to meet.

“Oh, don’t worry, your assistant will be here soon,” said Ray, reaching to pull out a chair for her, “she told me that she had business to attend to and will join us as soon as she’s done.”

That did sound like Juyeon, though Nari hesitated before accepting the seat he offered. The castle, the grounds, Ray...it was all like something from a fairy tale and at the back of her mind she had a strange feeling about it. Perhaps because it was so idyllic, she felt more inclined to seek out its darkest secrets.

“Are you alright, Miss Song?” Ray asked after she had been silent for quite some time.

“I,” she said, a sudden rush of guilt when she noticed the concern on his face. “It’s nothing. Thank you for this meal!”

She accepted the chair he offered and watched as he reached for a tea set, preparing her Darjeeling just as he had before.

“If there is anything I can do to make you more comfortable, just say the word.”

Nari sighed at that, wondering how she could explain to him-to anyone- her feelings from the past few days.

“Do you ever just wish that you could live your life again? The same years, but with different choices,” she said, absentmindedly running her fingers over the empty spot where her engagement ring used to be.

It was a question that had lingered at the back of her mind even before she entered Rika’s apartment. Before she even graduated high school. Just saying it out loud made it seem like nonsense, though, and she chuckled as Ray positioned a fresh cup of tea in front of her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, hiding her face behind the cup, “that probably sounds ridiculous...I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have-“

“Oh no!” Ray said, snatching up her hands in his. “I understand completely. Before I came here, I was…”

He shuddered at the thought, though tried -and failed- to pass it off as laughter.

“I was weak before,” he said. “Our Lady, she gave me purpose again, showed me the truth. I only wish I had known then what I know now, but spreading the word about everything we’ve accomplished here..well...it’s comforting. Surely there are others waiting to be saved as I was.”

Nari had yet to meet the manager of the castle grounds, but she thought she got a feel for her as she glanced around the garden. Only someone with a good deal of ambition and a kind heart would build such a unique environment and reach out to those in need.

“I think,” said Nari, squeezing Ray’s hand, “I’m going to like your boss.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Believer B401 was far from pleased and Jihyun did not need to know the inner workings of the castle to guess why. He had frogmarched him out of the garden without so much as a word, pushing him through a side door and locking it behind them both. At first Jihyun thought he had been caught, only for Believer B401 to chastise him about his lack of discretion in regards to their guest.

“How do you mean to explain your robes,” he snapped. “Mister Ray gave us clear instructions!”

In a way, he was grateful for the interruption. Left alone to his devices he would almost certainly have acted without thinking.

“I’m sorry,” said Jihyun, “I’m on the intelligence team and only returned to the castle today.”

As excuses went, it seemed to do the job. Believer B401 let out a sound of annoyance and hit him in the shoulder.

“Don’t let it happen again,” he said. “If you jeopardize the operation, the Saviour might never forgive you.”

“What’s so special about the girl?” Jihyun asked, knowing exactly why Nari was important, but willing the acolyte to reveal more. Did they plan to recruit her? Was she a hostage, as her picture had implied? Just how did Rika plan to use her?

Unfortunately, he was out of luck in that regard. The acolyte did not know anything.

“All I know,” said Believer B401, “is that they put her under the care of Mister Ray and Miss Jenny.”

“Mister Ray?” He repeated, louder than he meant to.

“Ah, of course, you probably missed the ceremony. Mister Ray was the man in the garden.”

“Mister Ray,” said Jihyun, sounding out the name and wondering at its origins. There had to be a reason Saeran had chosen such a name…

And then there was the other question burning away at the back of his mind. If Saeran was Mister Ray, then who was Miss Jenny?

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“Ahhhh, I always get the dirty jobs.”

Believer C607 leaned her head against the bars of the cell, taking in the shivering form of the prisoner.

“Hey,” she said, giving him a tentative nudge with her toes, “hey wake up.”

Despite her efforts, he lay still and she motioned for the nearest acolyte to open up the door. The cell smelled quite strongly of sweat, medications and other things she did not want to think about and she wrinkled up her nose in disgust as she stepped inside, taking extra care not to dirty her shoes.

“You had better start talking,” she said, kicking over the bucket of water they had positioned in the corner. The prisoner gasped as water spread across the floor of his cell, chancing a look at her as he repostioned his weight.

He froze on the spot as he took in her face, eyes suddenly desperate with recognition.

“J-Juyeon,” gasped Driver Kim as he reached to grab her by the waist, crumpling the magenta fabric of her blazer, “Juyeon, we need to get out of here, Miss Song-“

He groaned as she kicked him away, realisation setting in too late.

“First of all, don’t touch me with those filthy hands,” she said. “And secondly-“

She stepped back out of the cell and smiled at the second acolyte; a new girl whose hands shook as she held up a tray of instruments.

“If you want to leave here alive,” said C607, taking a set of pliers, “you will call me Miss Jenny.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like Juyeon, go love on [Rose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/professionalcinderella/pseuds/professionalcinderella) who let me use her!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I sobbed some ugly tears writing this.  
> Please note this chapter contains references drugging, torture and character death.  
> Also Rika.  
> She needs a warning.

**Three months ago**

Nari’s train was running late. She frowned at the timetable, muttering to herself that _of course it was_. She had chosen to take it as an experiment, one that she was careful to lie to her family and friends about. As far as they knew, she was doing it for the environment, when in reality she was considering selling her car. She doubted she would be unemployed for long, but if that proved to be the case, using the bullet train would be easier on her finances than a car.

She took a seat as she waited for the next train, taking her phone from her pocket. She had been checking the business and job listings of three different news sites and loaded up the first, frowning almost immediately when the page finally loaded.

**KOREA’S MOST ELIGIBLE BACHELOR: an exclusive interview with the heir to C &R**

She could not deny that he was handsome, but the carefully posed photograph inside of his office only added insult to injury. It was difficult not to imagine those stern features dismissing her from C&R.

Nari opened her emails instead, scrolling through the usual spam and lingering over a particularly curious entry.

_Paradise awaits you, Nari Song_

With a smirk, she opened the e-mail, expecting some kind of shopping coupon or horoscope spam. The actual e-mail was even more cryptic, though, and she read over it several times to try and gauge its meaning.

_Don’t you want to escape from this filthy world?_

_This is an invitation to paradise._

 

_Are you suffering from your past?_

_We will help the pain go away._

 

_A world filled with pleasure…_

_A world filled with truth…_

_A world with no tears…._

_A world with no rejections…_

 

_Accept the angel’s invitation and enter the mysterious messenger._

There was a link at the bottom and Nari clicked it, curious of the messenger and quietly acknowledging the clever marketing at play. No matter how many pretty words an advertisement had, there was no match for a person’s natural curiosity. The appstore entry was equally as vague, listed as the angel’s invitation with no screenshots. Two people before her had offered reviews, claiming their lives were changed as a result of the app, offering no further details than that. Nari read over the page twice before clicking download. She had nothing better to do, after all.

Her train arrived as the app finished downloading and she watched her screen as she gripped the nearest railing. By the first stop, she had created a login and proceeded to the opening screen, which offered no answers either, looking exactly like a messenger platform, with icons for e-mail and some form of texting function. She tapped at each, taking in the empty contact pages and coming to the conclusion that it was some kind of chat room, even if no one appeared to be online.

She was about to put her phone away, deciding to take another look later on, when the screen went blank, displaying green letters of code that she did not recognise.  


* * *

 

**Three months later**

“What foods do you like?” Ray asked, arranging a fresh napkin on a saucer for his guest.

“Hmm?”

Judging from her expression, she was curious of his motives and he couldn’t find it in himself to blame her. The elixir of salvation was, after all, bitter on the senses and he did not want her to suffer any more than was necessary. The very thought of her face crumbling into one of agony left his heart skipping beats and palms clammy.

He had never been able to stand the thought of her coming to harm; had picked her out from hundreds based on that fact alone. She was different to the others: fragile and mysterious and completely out of place in the ordinary world.

“Ah! I’m sorry to ask such a strange question,” he said, “I just wondered if my cooking suited your tastes. If you’d rather something else, I can go and prepare it for you.”

“Oh,” she said, “please don’t worry! Everything here is…”

She gestured at the table, at all of the pastries and soups and other dishes that he had prepared for her.

“This is more than enough.”

“I’m so happy you think so! Although...I must say I am still curious. I’ve never had the chance to cook for someone like you before.”

“Someone like me?”

Ray blushed, realising too late that his words might come across as offensive.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to insult you!”

“You didn’t,” said Nari, her smile softening into one of sympathy. “Hmmm…let me think.”

She never got the chance to tell him, however, for C607 entered the garden and shattered the relative peace.

“Miss Song!” She called, waving and running towards the pavilion as fast as her heels would allow. “Miss Song, good morning!”

C607 had taken to her role as Assistant Park almost too well. Most of the clothes she used when in character came from her own personal collection, which she had abandoned upon her initiation into Mint Eye. The boldness of it made Ray’s toes curl; C607 discarded her beliefs as quickly as her clothes and her love for the paradise was transparently insincere.

“You weren’t in your room,” breathed C607, “I’ve been looking for you.”

She took a seat at the table and helped herself to a cup of coffee, quite deliberately not acknowledging him. He knew it was deliberate; that Miss Park had no reason to interact with him and going out of her way to do so might arouse suspicions, yet he would be lying if he said it didn’t bother him.

“Have you heard from Driver Kim?”

Nari was straight to business and Ray spotted the mean edge to C607’s smile even if she didn’t.

“I spoke to him just a few minutes ago, actually. He’s really sorry about the delay.”

“Is he…” Nari hesitated, thumbs tracing the edge of her cup, “alright?”

“Of course he is! He’s never been better.”

C607 took a sip of her coffee, leaning forward as if to whisper a secret.

“Actually,” she said, “he told me to tell you that we can leave as soon as you finish breakfast.”

Ray pretended he didn’t notice the joy in Nari’s eyes; the way she gulped down the rest of her coffee and dusted crumbs from her lap. He pretended he didn’t notice C607 reaching for her hand and guiding her away from the pavilion; away from him.

And he absolutely pretended he did not see C607 sneering over her shoulder at him.

* * *

Nari couldn’t believe her luck any more than she could hide her excitement to go home.

She all but threw her belongings together to the amusement of Juyeon, who lingered in the doorway and pointed out the things she missed.

“At this rate, that Ray guy will think you’re running away from him,” she laughed. “He is a little weird, don’t you think?”

Nari disapprovingly glanced up from her purse.

“He’s a little... enthusiastic,” she said, “but he means well.”

“Haven’t you seen those long _lingering_ looks he gives you? I think he has a crush on you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!”

“I’m not being ridiculous! It’s clear to anyone!”

Nari sighed, turning to chastise Juyeon, only to freeze at the sight of her swooping forward with a cloth in her hand. It smelled of something, something sweet and artificial, and she writhed against Juyeon’s grasp, digging her nails into the nearest arm and throwing back her head to try and loosen the one gripping her hair.

She realised it was chloroform only moments before her eyes fell shut and her body limp. She stared at her own outstretched hand, reaching and flailing, convinced she would remember Juyeon’s smile forever.

* * *

Jumin’s upcoming wedding had had something of a ripple effect on C&R. For the majority of employees it was gossip; hushed comments and carefully hidden tabloids. For the other select few, it was extra work. Almost overnight, the country had grown fascinated with Nari Song, whether it was the clothes she wore, her origins, the hidden truth of her relationship with Jumin; there was some part of her that intrigued everyone.

Suddenly the PR department had not only the prospect of a scandal to deal with, but weeks of careful research into a person that ordinarily would take months. They needed answers for any given official statement and ideas for how best to build her public image, whether it was denying the engagement came as a result of a pregnancy or scripting her replies to interview questions.

On the receiving end of arguably the highest amount of fallout was one Jaehee Kang, who found herself in an endless cycle of adjusting schedules, advising the PR department, passing on memos and more.

She had come to dread it whenever Jumin called her to his office because it never preceded anything good. This time around was no exception to the rule and she mentally reshuffled all of her recent e-mails and phone calls in an attempt to gauge exactly what Jumin was about to tell her. It seemed almost optimistic to wonder if he had a new pet project in mind.

“Mr Han?” She said, after knocking at his door. “You asked to see me?”

Jumin was in the process of flipping through the pages of one of the files from the mountain at his desk.

“Ah, Assistant Kang,” he said and waved her over, though never looked up from the file. “I have a task for you. It’s of the utmost priority.”

“Of course,” she said, pulling out the notebook she had been keeping her pocket. The constant adjustments and additions and reshuffles were difficult to keep up with at the best of times and she had taken to scribbling them down where possible.

“I need you to make a cancellation.”

“A cancellation,” she said, pen at the ready. “Of which particular appointment?”

“All of them.”

Jaehee glanced up from her notebook.

“P-pardon?”

Surely she had misheard, though that hope rapidly dissolved as he finally set aside the file in his hands.

“Sorry...that was vague,” he said. “I would like for you to cancel everything in regards to my engagement. My regular business appointments may remain the same.”

He said it casually, though Jaehee could only stare. He had finalised the design for the cufflinks he would wear on his wedding day only the night before and cancelling months of work in a single day never happened without a good reason. She wondered if she ought to ask about Nari, though decided against it. If the worst truly had happened, then reminding Jumin of the incident would only make matters worse.

Instead she accepted his task and pulled her phone from her pocket after sitting back down at her own desk.

_Nari….is everything okay?_

* * *

Ray had spent most of the evening and some of the morning preparing dishes for Nari’s breakfast. He had chosen each and every one based on things he had watched her eat through hacked security cameras in the penthouse she called home. He had cast his mind back to mornings in which she made coffee and wrapped her arms around Jumin’s shoulders, stepping up onto her tiptoes for kisses as he picked up his cup. He had remembered chefs entering the premises and anxiously waiting at the side of their dining table until dismissed. He also remembered Nari reaching into the back of the kitchen cupboard for sugary cereal: the same sugary cereal that Jumin occasionally reached for when he ate breakfast alone.

Ray wasn’t sure when exactly he had mentally inserted himself into every situation; cooking Nari pancakes instead of Jumin Han. He was not sure when he had decided she was miserable and only he could make her smile. They were selfish thoughts, out of line with the Saviour’s teachings, but his mind drifted nonetheless.

After Nari left with Juyeon, he returned to the kitchen, sinking his hands into the steaming dishwater and scrubbing each plate at a time. Technically speaking, he did not need to undertake such a task himself. Any given believer would happily have accepted any such order. He wanted to clear his thoughts, though, wanted to scrub the scrub the plates clean where he could not his mind. He wanted to wash away Nari’s happy expression at the prospect of returning home.

He had always condemned Juyeon and her selfishness; her desire for approval more so than paradise. The irony of it was clear to him now that he wanted Nari to smile and laugh for no one but him. He wanted her to smooth the creases out of _his_ shirt, rearrange _his_ tie, rush to greet _him_ when he walked through the door. Even the sting of the hot water could not erase it.

The previous night he had reached for elixir, desperate to quieten his mind and focus. It was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the dark thoughts at the back of his mind, though. The whispers that repeated everything he did not want to hear.

_The saviour will use her to convert Jumin Han._

He scrubbed harder.

_She will choose him at the everlasting party_

Harder, he scrubbed harder.

_Even in paradise, she won’t love you._

He stopped, the water from the sink spilling onto the floor.

 _You’re wrong,_ he thought to himself. _You’re wrong and I’m not listening to you anymore._

He squeezed his eyes open and shut, reaching to place the dish he had been washing alongside all of the others. There was no dish, though, only his hands; hands that he had so vigorously scrubbed that they were bleeding.

_I won’t listen_

His squeezed his hands into fists, the sting of his broken skin satisfying on the senses.

_I won’t listen._

_I won’t_

* * *

Posing undercover as an acolyte came with an equal amount of perks and downsides. Nobody questioned Jihyun’s ignorance on the matter of their special guest and he found that some believers had curiosities of their own. It was, however, increasingly difficult to continue feigning ignorance. Even as someone outside of the castle for an extended period of time, he should have known which rooms were normally out of bounds. Twice they caught him at the stairwell and twice he lied about his presence there. Finally, on the third attempt, he changed his tactics and told a half truth.

“I want to see her,” he said, shrugging off the believer’s hand on his shoulder. “The Saviour thinks she is special...I want to see it for myself.”

It was a risky move, considering, but ultimately one that paid off. The three of them climbed the stairs to an empty floor, eerily silent to the point that everything they said and did left an echo.

“I heard her ceremony is tonight,” said one of his group, a woman, whose pretty face lay obscured by her hood. “I overheard Mister Ray telling Miss Jenny that the elixir would be ready once he added the final touches.”

_Elixir_

Just the word sent shivers up his spine. He knew the implications even if he did not the finer details. Jihyun stopped in his tracks, wanting nothing more than to steal Nari away from that terrible place. He opened his mouth to demand they take him to the saviour; to tell them that he was no believer. Before he could, though, footsteps rang out in the empty corridor and his heart skipped a beat.

A handful of other believers were coming towards them, led by a woman in a magenta uniform. He knew her face, despite the fact that he had only seen her on a couple of occasions.

Back when he was still recovering from his eye surgery at Jumin’s penthouse, he had taken every chance to help Nari adjust to her new role. Sometimes that amounted to describing the personality of interviewers or the places she should avoid if she didn’t want to be swarmed by the media. At other times, his help arrived in the form of making tea and reading through the seemingly endless lists of things that needed her attention.

On a few of those occasions, Nari’s assistant had visited the penthouse, though for the most part he only ever encountered her as a disembodied voice on the other end of the phone. The few times he had seen her, she had been clutching bubble tea or informing Nari of appointments added to her schedule at the last moment. He was sure he had seen her at one of his exhibitions too, though the last time he had had one he and Rika were still together, so he was sure he must have been mistaken.

The more he thought about it, the more it made sense for Rika to plant someone like her so close to Nari and he wondered exactly how long she had been planning such a move. How long had Juyeon known about Rika’s plans? In any case, he realised that she must have been the ‘Miss Jenny’ the other acolytes had spoken of.

He clenched his hands into fists at what followed her; she led a number of hooded believers, one of whom cradled a body in their arms.

No. Not a body. Nari.

The acolyte held her with the same amount of care one would expect of a ragdoll, allowing one of her arms to dangle to the floor as the other lay crushed against their body.

All he could think about was her laughter all of those months ago. The three of them once played poker; Nari setting down her earrings and Jumin a book from his shelf. He had long wondered what to bet himself and ultimately set down an IOU.

“An IOU?” Jumin had said, examining the paper.

“Yes,” he said. “Whoever wins this can ask one thing of me in the future.”

“That’s potentially dangerous.”

“Are you suggesting either of us would take advantage of him?” Nari had laughed and, beaten, Jumin shuffled the cards.

Unsurprisingly, she won, and Jihyun knew from Jumin’s soft smile as she turned the pages of her new book that he was not the only one who had allowed her to win.

Of late, her laughter only left him guilty. It was his fault that she had been tricked into the apartment; his fault that she lay unconscious in front of him. Every time she laughed, he remembered Jumin’s lips against his own and his own deep, dark need to believe she could not be trusted.

He remembered Jumin’s insistences as they sat on the roof of the penthouse that they tell her about the kiss they had shared. He wanted her to know everything, and it was Jihyun who protested. He hated change, yet wanted everything to. He did not want to hurt her even slightly, yet wanted to steal away everything she held dear.

He was the one who couldn’t be trusted; Nari’s bright smile when she returned to the penthouse only serving as a cruel reminder of his betrayal. She was so eager to know if they had enjoyed the meteor shower and he realised too late her full intentions. It was no coincidence that she had left them alone together; that she had orchestrated everything in the hopes that they would repair their friendship.

He could not bring himself to regret the kiss, but he was sure he would regret the betrayal for the rest of his life.

“Juyeon,” he called, dragging down the hood of his cloak.

She seemed surprised that anyone had called out to her by name, though the shock left her as soon as she saw him standing there.

“Let her go,” he said, gaze drifting from her to Nari, his trembling hands breaking any illusion of composure.

“Well, well, well,” said Juyeon, approaching him in the same slow, practised fashion a tiger might. “What have we here?”

* * *

They took him to a cell in the basement. Jihyun knew from observations and conversations with acolytes that up until recently, such a thing was rarely done; it was the norm to take prisoners and any intruders before the saviour until they were cleansed and no longer deemed dangerous or, alternatively, died in captivity. For him to be isolated so quickly meant only one thing: he was considered an enemy of the organisation and if Rika came to see him at all, it would be to announce whatever torture she had in mind for him.

The guards draped a hood over his head that smelled mouldy, as if it was designated for drownings, and he choked at the smell as they pushed his shoulder to get him moving. They probably only walked down a couple of short flights of stairs, but it felt like he walked for miles. Finally, the guard tugged the cloak from his head and kicked him into the back of his new prison, locking it behind them with a mutter that they would come back once they had received orders.

“Come back and let me out of here,” Jihyun threw his body against the bars. “Tell the saviour to come!”

They did not acknowledge him, though, no matter how hard he shook the bars. He slumped to the floor despairingly, considering Nari’s limp body in the acolyte’s arms. In retrospect everything was obvious to him; he should never have suspected her, should never have fallen into the trap of questioning her intentions solely because she had won the heart of his friend. He should have told her everything from the beginning instead of succumbing to jealousy.

He wondered if he would ever get the chance to explain her current circumstances; if he would ever be able to take her hands in his and explain how he had kissed Jumin on the roof of the penthouse. The latter scared him most of all and he could not bear to imagine her reaction. In his heart, she would always be happy and smiling, brewing good coffee and pouring bad wine. She would always be the one who laughed at his double entendres and scolded him for missing meals.

And in that moment, just like Ray before him, he realised his love for her like a storm cloud overhead.

“M….Mathter V, thir,” someone mumbled in the adjoining cell, dragging him out of his thoughts. He peered into the darkness to make out the owner and gasped when he saw.

“Driver Kim!”

This was not the Driver Kim of days past, however. This man drooled blood and had cuts across his temples.

“What happened to you?” Jihyun said, holding onto the bars that separated them. “Who did this?”

Driver Kim’s eyes glazed over at the memory and Jihyun regretted asking him.

“I’ll get you out of here,” said Jihyun, seeing the occupants of the other cells for the first time. He recognised them all; had seen their faces in Luciel’s files. They were all members of the agency and all MIA. The ones that weren’t unconscious groaned in pain at their injuries, some even chained to the floor of their cell.

“I’ll save you,” Jihyun muttered. “I’ll save you all.”

_Somehow._

* * *

Nari’s senses were muffled when she opened her eyes. For a moment, she thought she was back in the penthouse and half expected Jumin to be beside her.

It came as something of a surprise when she found herself tied to a chair in a strange room, arms bound behind her back and someone, whose voice she only half recognised, muttering that she was waking up.

Nari lifted her head, instantly regretting it as a sharp headache flooded her senses. She hissed with pain, leaning over until she could see straight ahead before making a second attempt to sit up.

Juyeon was standing on the other side of the room… or at least she thought it was Juyeon. This Juyeon had on a strange magenta uniform with a rose fixed to her blazer. What’s more, even though that Juyeon stared her in the face, there was no hint of recognition in her features.

“Ju...Juyeon?”

Juyeon did not reply. It was someone else who reached for her face: someone with sharp nails and a black mask that obscured their features.

“Welcome to paradise, Nari Song.”

They reached to clamp their hand down over her nose, clutching a vial of a bright blue liquid in the other. Nari clenched her mouth shut, unable to tear her eyes away from Juyeon, who watched her struggle without a reaction. Beside her stood Ray, who fiddled with his hands and avoided her gaze.

Her chest burned and she gasped for air, giving her assailant the opportunity to force the bottle against her lips. The liquid inside was bitter, burning her throat and insides, through when she tried to spit it out the masked stranger slammed her hand over her lips, forcing them shut until she had no choice but to swallow.

“What have you….done to me?” She asked, trying to spit out the remainder of the liquid, stomach churning so forcefully that she was sure she was going to throw up.  

“Please,” she murmured, the shakiness of her hands transferring into her voice. “Let me go.”

“Don’t look so sad,” they said, so close that their breath was warm against her face. “I would never hurt someone so precious to Ray.”

Nari’s heart skipped a beat and Ray called out from the other side of the room.

“Saviour-”

“You may leave.”

Nari’s thoughts had been muddled and confused even before having a chemical forced down her throat and she dug her nails into her palms in an attempt to stop the room spinning. She remembered Juyeon’s words only a short time earlier:

_At this rate, that Ray guy will think you’re running away from him. He is a little weird, don’t you think?_

_Haven’t you seen those long lingering looks he gives you? I think he has a crush on you._

As Ray and Juyeon left the room, Ray’s hands twitching and his expression one of concern, Nari could not help but think about how comforting it was that at least one part of her stay had been real. Perhaps it was the drug, or her own fear, but when the door closed it echoed in her senses. What was going to happen to her now? She wished Juyeon and Ray would just come back, for even if their intentions were far from pleasant, she would at the very least recognise their faces. There was something strange about their ‘saviour’; a kind of familiarity that she did not understand.

“You have such beautiful eyes,” said the saviour, “I can see why Jumin favours you.”

Nari’s heart skipped a beat.

“What do you know about Jumin?”

“I know that Jumin is the CEO in-line,” said the saviour. “I know that he prefers the finer things in life… Egyptian cotton, aged whiskeys...intelligent women. Most importantly, I know that he wouldn’t let just anybody into his inner circle. Tell me, how do you find my RFA?”

Up until that point, C&R was the most obvious reason she had been kidnapped. She had, of course, forgotten that without enemies to the RFA she might never have arrived in the apartment all of those months ago.

“ _Your_ RFA?” She said, realisation rapidly sinking in.

She finally understood why the masked woman looked familiar. Even with the mask on, her resemblance to the girl in V’s photographs was obvious.

“No,” said Nari. “You- you’re dead!”

“That’s what V told you,” said Rika, “and you must not believe his lies.”

Nari was not so naive as to think V had never lied to or kept information from her. She had watched him play poker, after all. He had an excellent poker face even as he let her win.

“I’m sure he had his reasons.”

“It seems he has already poisoned you,” laughed Rika. “I wonder what sweet promises he whispered in your ear to make you trust him so much.”

“He didn’t whisper anything! I know he’s a good man.”

Rika sighed, clearly unimpressed with her answer.

“Tell me Miss Song,” she said softly, placing a hand on Nari’s shoulder, “what _are_ you afraid of? Shall I guess?”

“I...no...I-”

“Hmmmm,” Rika searched her face. “You stayed with the RFA even after there was no need for you to. You attend every meeting Jumin asks of you... could it be?”

She smiled cruelly, sending shivers down Nari’s spine.

“Are you afraid of being alone?”

Suddenly Nari was fourteen again, sticking pictures of idols she did not even like to the inside of her locker. Rika pressed a finger against her lips, coming to a conclusion before she could confirm or deny it.

“Sssssh, it’s okay,” she said. “In this place, no one will leave you. We will be kinder to you than the RFA. Nobody here will dictate how you dress or what you eat. We will not lie to you or ignore you, like Jumin and the rest of the RFA.”

Nari thrashed, eager to shake off Rika’s touch.

“I _LOVE_ Jumin,” she protested. “I _want_ to make him happy.”

Even as she said it, she knew how it sounded. She would not have believed her either.

“You’re very kind,” said Rika. “And so simple minded. What makes you so sure that he cares for you?”

Ordinarily, Nari would have been offended by such an insinuation. Ever since news of her engagement went public, she had scowled at so many articles about the status of her private life that Jumin had stroked her hair and warned her that she would age prematurely. Now, though, all she could think about was the clatter of her engagement ring against the kitchen tiles and Jumin’s words on the messenger.

 _Perhaps I only loved you because I thought you were something more._ __  
__  
_Perhaps you were always meant to be a stranger to the RFA._ __  
  
I think… that if I had not proposed to you so publicly, in such a way, I might never have married you.

Every breath left her mind and body fluttering, as if she bobbed up and down on a stormy sea. She hated herself and her own naivety. How had she never realised that she was being manipulated? How had she allowed herself into such a situation?

“He loves me!” She spat, closing her eyes. She refused to believe Jumin’s affection was a dream; just another stain in her ivory tower.

Rika seemed delighted by her responses, reaching out a finger to catch her tears.

“Jumin...loves me,” said Nari, more to herself than to Rika. “He loves me.”

_He loves me._

She remembered Sarah Choi’s horrified expression as he leaned in for their first kiss; a kiss that tasted of pancakes and gave her butterflies.

She remembered how her hand trembled when he fell to one knee at the party.

She remembered the scent of roses against her skin as he sat behind her in the bathtub to wash her back.

 _He loves me_.

She also remembered his expression in their last argument; the sound of him moving around the kitchen as she waited for him to knock on her bedroom door.

_He loves me_

_He loves_

_He_

She repeated it even as everything went black and her head lolled over onto her chest.

“Don’t worry,” said Rika, stroking her hair. “I’m not the same as them. I want you exactly as you are.”

She cupped a hand around Nari’s face, feeling for her breath against her skin. She had made such a powerful elixir and many people were not strong enough to survive the ordinary batches. Those that did came out transformed, butterflies from a painful chrysalis, wiser for their introduction into the truth of the world.

Nari’s breaths did not come, however. Rika’s hand remained as cold as it had always been. With a frown, she pressed her fingers against the other woman’s neck, feeling for a pulse where there was none.

She let go of Nari’s head, then, sighing deeply and crossing the room to pour herself a cup of tea.

Perhaps they were not so similar after all.

* * *

 

**Three months earlier**

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...She gets better?


	8. Chapter 8

**Four hours earlier**

Seven had never visited the safe house before and, as such, was not sure what to expect when they got there. The reality was a cozy building with a large fireplace and patchwork quilts. It was almost hauntingly welcoming and Seven could not shove aside the knowledge that the last people to use the place were MIA. He wondered at the conversations that might have taken place there and shuddered, suddenly eager to leave.

Vanderwood remained unperturbed, striding inside without hesitation and lifting the rug to reveal a safe.

“Do you think….” Seven began, wanting to ask if he believed their trip was a mistake. The presence of the other agents remained; impossible to ignore. For the first time in months, the gravity of his decisions lay bare for all to see. Every team he had insisted on and every one of V’s refusals. V, whose location he had been unable to trace, and who had thrown aside his life without a second thought. He knew the danger better than anyone and the resignation in his eyes was something Seven was sure he would never forget.

“Think? Think what?” Vanderwood glanced over his shoulder as he fiddled with the combination lock.

Seven had insisted Vanderwood come with him and suddenly he regretted it. It was difficult to shake the ominous feeling in his gut that after they left the safehouse, something terrible would happen.

“Can we roast marshmallows when this is over?!” He asked, smiling widely to disguise the seriousness of his earlier thoughts.

Vanderwood sighed and reached into the safe for the bullets contained within.

“I hope you’re this cheerful when the Boss finds out.”

Seven watched him pull out a rifle and clapped his hands together, suddenly eager to be looking at anything else.

“I’ll fetch some firewood,” he said, “for when we get back!”

* * *

**Several hours later**

“What  _ is  _ this place?”

Getting to the castle grounds undetected had proved challenging. Between sabotaging the security cameras and overriding their systems, it took longer than usual to breach the building.

They chose a different infiltration spot than the one he had passed over to the missing teams. It would almost certainly be more heavily defended than in previous attempts; a fact that left his hands shaking as he hacked. The security cameras came first, taken a floor at a time, Seven counting how many doors lay unguarded. In the end, he settled for a single door on one of the lower levels, which had more security cameras and electronic locks than any other, but nothing in the way of guards. 

It was a storeroom of some sort, though Seven could not help but feel ‘treasury’ was more appropriate. While Vanderwood closed the door behind them, he stared agape at the number of vases, oil paintings and even cars within. 

“How could a cult afford such things without exposing themselves?” He asked, running his fingers along the door handle of a bright red convertible. Someone had looped a tag around it and he lifted it to examine it in more detail, blood running cold when he saw the details scribbled across it.

“I can’t believe it,” he said, tearing it off and thrusting it into Vanderwood’s hands. “Are you seeing this?”

Vanderwood turned the card over in his hands, eyes growing wide.

_ Jaguar F TYPE _

_ Worth: 139569612 ₩ _

_ Donated by: Believer F6723 _

“This is bad,” said Vanderwood. “If their believers are handing over personal possessions, especially ones as luxurious as these, who knows the resources they might have at their disposal. The sales value of even just one of these…”

“I know, I know,” said Seven. “It’s enough for bribes.”

“I was thinking of weapons, but that too.”

“That explains where Rika got the money to build such a place so quickly,” said Seven, walking from one corner of the room to the next, trying to take in as much of its contents as he could. “She had a way of convincing people to hand over their money.”

“You almost sound proud.”

“Are you forgetting that she organised fundraisers?”

Rika’s parties were so long ago and yet he remembered them as if they had only happened one or two days before. At the back of his mind, he still could not separate the Rika he had encountered in reports from the girl who had given him food and handed over books. It did not help that the room and all of its trinkets half reminded him of mass. He had never seen such grandeur back then and, even though the place was probably not as ornate as he thought it was, at the time he was as awestruck as if he had entered Solomon’s mines.

“Don’t let your emotions get in the way,” said Vanderwood, fiddling with his weapon as Seven sat down in the corner to pull out his laptop. “She’s not that person anymore.”

“I know,” said Seven, staring into his screen and closing off every memory of sunlight on golden hair.

In previous weeks, he had tried to infiltrate Mint Eye’s systems on multiple occasions. It seemed that Mint Eye had a hacker of their own, trained in old school methods and enthusiastic about challenging him to say the least. His least favourite detail about their plan or lack thereof was the daunting task of getting inside the castle without tipping off that same hacker. Over the past few hours, however, he had yet to encounter them, even as he reprogrammed the security systems. He had never remained unchallenged for so long before and did not know if he should consider it a good thing.

“Here,” he said, pointing out a particular doorway to Vanderwood. “There are security cameras and guards outside of this room, but no cameras or locks within. It’s probably some kind of dungeon.”

“Our remaining agents will be inside,” said Vanderwood, leaning over to see. “Assuming they’re still alive, we could retrieve them.”

“Correction: that’s what  _ you _ will be doing.”

“What are you planning?”

Seven pointed out a singular camera, showing a control room with dozens of screens.

“Getting in here is one thing,” he said, refusing to indulge the darker of his thoughts. “We shouldn’t waste the opportunity to gather intel.”

Retrospectively, he realised that he did not need to put it delicately. Vanderwood nodded in agreement, clearly thinking the same thing: that if something went wrong or they never made it out, it would not be in vain.

“This control room,” he said, “I’m sure I will be able to get into the databases from there.”

“How long?”

“An hour, maybe?”

“ _ An hour _ ?”

“I don’t know how much data will be there!”

Vanderwood hissed with frustration before getting to his feet.

“I’ll give you an hour from the moment we leave this room. If I’m not back here in an hour-”

“I know.”

“What about the party planner? The photographer guy?”

Vanderwood paused, considering the question carefully.

“Your brother?”

Seven closed his laptop, expression darkening for the briefest flicker of a second before he broke into a smile.

“I guess we’ll have to make it up as we go along!”

* * *

Ray was sure he would never forget the first time he saw a dead body. More specifically, he remembered not seeing anything at all. He remembered That Man reaching for his shoulder as he peered around the edge of the door, in floods of tears and sick to his stomach.

“Don’t look!” That Man told him even though he already had. 

The last time he saw his mother it was as a lifeless arm, stretched out from kitchen to sitting room, and the rest of her body out of sight. He saw the blood, though, the bright red that covered her fingers and some of the floor. He never saw the rest of her body in the end, but had enough of an imagination to conjure up the rest. Sometimes she had a rope around her neck. Other times, her face lay obscured by her hair. 

Nari’s face also lay covered by her hair, trailing over her shoulders as she lay lifeless in her seat. She did not look in the least bit different to a matter of moments before and he sank onto his knees in front of her, the room around him fading into nothing.

He heard the Saviour sighing to Juyeon and screwing the lid back onto the bottle of elixir.

“She was to be my favourite, you know.”

He heard Juyeon’s words of comfort as he reached for Nari’s hand. It was still warm and he ran his fingers over the skin, unable to tear his thoughts away from the saviour’s words.

She meant to make her beautiful, to free her from the lies of the RFA; to bend and break her so that she might heal. But how could anyone know the truth when they were dead? Healing was only possible for the living.

Ray could not help but think of every flower he had ever loved; every butterfly he had caught as a child. He had not understood why That Man had protested it until he caught a swallowtail between his fingers. He meant to draw it, though it struggled in his grasp and he crushed it in his heavy handed attempts to keep it still. He was too sad to draw after that, unable to look away from the dust it left behind.

Nari Song was already beautiful. She always had been and he wondered why it was clear to him only then. His attempts at caring for her had been as clumsy as when the swallowtail thrashed against his fingers and he regretted finding her, leaning his head onto her lap and wishing that he had chosen another person from the list. 

As he untied her wrists and ankles, taking in the purpling of her skin, his hands shook and his eyes welled with tears. He bit at his lip as he hoisted her into his arms and followed Juyeon into the adjoining room, sometimes used for recovering acolytes, though most often to store the bodies of failed converts until burial.

He caught Juyeon’s second glances as he carefully laid Nari on the bed, instinctively cradling her neck to avoid it falling backwards even though such care was largely unnecessary. She was no longer capable of feeling pain; no longer able to feel the cold. Even so, he tucked her in, desperate to keep the warmth from leaving her skin.

He had lost his focus; could see nothing beyond Nari Song and his own regret. When the saviour told him to prepare a grave he was numb. He barely noticed another believer arrive, only turning to look at them as they leaned in to whisper something in the saviour’s ear.

The saviour said something to him as she left, though he could not make out her words and mumbled a farewell. Juyeon said something to him too as the door closed, though while he understood her tone very easily, he did not recognise a single one of her words. It was as if everything except for Nari’s body had been reduced to white noise or a song playing in a distant room.

He had so wanted her to see the truth, to stay forever at the eternal party. He had been so sure that the elixir would set her free. Now that she was gone, though, he could think of nothing but his sketchbook; of the gilded room he had so lovingly imprisoned her in.

He may not have been present, or held the elixir to her lips, but the fact remained that she had suffocated in his hands just like the swallowtail. He wished he had only set her free, just as he had spent years wishing he had loosened his grip and allowed the butterfly to leave his fingers. 

He wished he had trusted both of them enough to believe they would come back to him.

* * *

Nari Song’s death was regrettable to say the least.

Rika found that she was actually sad about it, even if she held no regrets. Those who did not survive the elixir were not worthy of the paradise and it seemed she had overestimated her in every respect. She descended the stairs to the basement in silence, contemplating how incredibly obvious it all should have been from the beginning. Nari had not questioned the RFA; had not questioned V or demanded to know all of their secrets. She had been only too happy to sit in her dollhouse and play at pretend; a perfect wife for a CEO-in line.

The moment Believer F913 whispered in her ear about an intruder demanding to see her-more specifically,  _ that _ intruder- her heart sang and she could not get to the dungeons fast enough. The timing was perfect, after all. Surely she had not been the only one with expectations of the new party planner. 

She had not expected him to look so pathetic, throwing himself at the bars of his cell the moment she appeared in his line of sight.

“Rika!” V called, “R-”

“Hmmmm….I didn’t expect to find you like this. It’s almost disappointing.”

V gripped the bars until his knuckles were white, staring her down even though his body trembled.

“Where’s Nari? Please, I-”

Rika slammed her own hands against the bars, leaving V to recoil and take several steps backwards.

“So that’s how it is?” She snarled. “I come here to have a chat with you and all you can think about is her.”

“Rika please… she’s innocent...let her go.”

“You speak as if I mean to hurt her. I have only her best interests in mind.”

“Rika, whatever you want her for, use me instead. Don’t hurt her, please.”

Rika rested her face against the bars of the cell, considering his words and their current situation.

She remembered it, of course. Remembered the pathetic way he lay trembling at her feet almost a year before. He told her then that she was kind and gentle and good, that they could be the same as they had always been. It could not have been more transparent that he spoke only of the person she might be and not the one she was. She wondered if he had ever loved her, if at any point in time he had ever understood the darkness within her. That day served as a grim reminder not only of his feelings for her, but how much she had left to accomplish. If she was truly to love the shadows in her heart, she should start by extinguishing the sun.

She ought to have been satisfied to see him shivering in a cell of her own design, but instead she found herself disappointed. Long had she dreamed of him begging and pleading in such a way, though in her imagination it was because he had come to understand his mistakes and role in her philosophy. She had hoped for so long that he would offer himself- that he would praise her for her wisdom in embracing the dark- but this time, just like the last, his sacrifice was not for her.

His heart still belonged to that other woman; a woman different to her in every way and similar in several more. A woman she had never met, never truly known, and never been able to touch.

And so it was that she threw back her head and laughed, laughed so hard that she could not breathe and V watched her in shock. He did not know if she laughed from merriment or despair and truthfully she didn’t either. Too late had she realised that, even just for a moment, she  _ had _ known that other woman. 

In past years, she had known her only as a second hand memory: V’s mother, long dead, buried and burned. It was easy to dismiss her, even as she paled in comparison. Death made saints of everyone, after all, and at the time of her death V had been too young to understand another person’s demons. The fact that he could not see beyond her ghost was forgivable; it came from childish ignorance and nothing more. He would learn better in the days to come; would fall to her feet a second time and beg her to set him free from the blindness in his heart.

In retrospect it was obvious why both of them had become so curious of Nari Song.

She did not know if she should be proud or not of her achievement. Nari was a ghost too now- too weak to live in the real world and embrace the truth-  and it put to rest Rika’s every question of who truly paled in comparison. She was glad she had never reached for the light, had never tried to be the person everyone believed her to be. She and the devil in her heart had won, but she could not bring herself to be happy about it. Even if Nari was a ghost, V still preferred that ghost to her. He had learned nothing, after all, and was still happy to be lost.

In retrospect she should have known that he would fall in love with her and that conviction left her catching her breath.

“That woman….” She said. “You can forget all about her. She deserved better than your deceptions.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I freed her from this cruel world,” she said. “Wherever she is now, she does not feel pain...does not have to suffer the lies and prejudices of our society.”

“Rika,” said V, the colour steadily draining from his face. “Tell me you didn’t-”

“How does it feel,” she said, turning to leave, “to know that the last thing she said of you was that you were a good man?”

It was satisfying to see him shiver again, shaking his head and muttering ‘no’.

“An idiot right to the end, it seems.”

* * *

There was no graveyard at the castle, only a plot in a largely deserted area of the grounds. The saviour had intended to transform it into a secondary garden, but ultimately far more acolytes failed to see the truth than originally believed, leaving it as a makeshift graveyard until they had no further use for it.

Ordinarily, Ray avoided going there, for each of its withered trees left his heart racing. Nothing grew there, nothing thrived and even the sky above it was dark. As he clutched at a shovel, he stared at his shoes, eager to ignore the dirt around him and forget why he was there in the first place.

Before coming to the garden, he had returned to the room Nari had originally been staying in, mumbling an excuse to Juyeon about double checking none of her possessions had been left behind. It was a bad idea, in retrospect, for the only evidence she had ever been there was the flower crown he had made for her. Presumably it had come off during her struggle with Juyeon and he had lowered himself onto the bed to touch the petals. 

_ Lily of the Valley. _ He wondered if she knew that one of its meanings was luck in love.

He wished he had never gone back to her room; had never seen the abandoned flowers. The more dirt he shifted, the heavier both his body and his tears became. She was weak, he repeated to himself. She was not worthy of the paradise and happy to remain in ignorance to the end. She represented everything about the world outside that he hated and he ought to have been relieved that she faced the saviour’s justice. He didn’t, though. He  _ couldn’t _ . The part of him that counted his blessings was too easily drowned out by the one that could not stand the idea of leaving her in an unmarked grave. She deserved better, deserved to rest somewhere that the sun could reach her.

He was not sure when he made the decision; when he left the upturned dirt behind and stormed into the gardens instead. When two or three believers cried out in alarm at the sight of him digging up a flower bed, he fully understood their reaction. Nari Song was evil, unworthy. She was a stain on Mint Eye and his stomach churned at how easily he had fallen for her charms. He hated himself for the tears in his eyes and mud on his hands. He hated himself for being weaker than she was; for loving and hating her so deeply and being completely incapable of moving aside from how she had looked with flowers in her hair.

He heard the believers crying out to him, felt the grip of one of them on his arm. 

He felt the weight of the shovel against one head and then two.

Perhaps he was not meant for paradise either. If he really understood the truth of the world, why was he so tempted by everything he had learned to despise? Was he really just a liar too? He dropped to his knees and dug his fingers into the remaining flowers-the same flowers he had woven into Nari’s hair. 

_ Lily of the Valley, for luck in love. _

He sobbed even as he yanked them out by the root, pulled and pulled until the flowerbed lay bare. He had expected it would make him feel better, but it only left him feeling empty.

Perhaps he had always been useless. He, who was unworthy of the truth of the world and too detached from its lies to belong to it. 

Perhaps he was just an airhead, after all. 

* * *

“This is all your fault, you know,” said Juyeon, adjusting her position in her chair.

There was no need to guard the dead. A corpse could not run away. Even so, she found herself unable to leave the room.

“If you’d never answered that email,” she said, “you’d be fine.”

Nari said nothing and she was not surprised- the dead could not speak any more than they could run- yet she found herself disappointed. Where was the satisfaction in betraying someone and never knowing their reaction? She recalled previous years, previous betrayals, every rival she had ever sabotaged. Their expression of shock made it all worth it, filling her with butterflies. She was addicted to that expression; addicted to being the winner in any given situation. She was addicted to waving her bloodied hands at those she had stabbed in the back.

She wanted nothing more than to laugh in Nari’s face; to tell her that she was weak and imperfect and would never be the favourite. She had held onto that moment as she shuffled every schedule and chatted to every client. It would all be worth it once she revealed her true colours. 

She did not regret Nari’s death in the slightest and, if anything, considered it the best possible scenario. Even so, she could not stop recalling their simpler moments together. The first time she shook her hand and bobbed on her heels, urging her to call her Jenny. She told herself that it was disappointment; that Nari died without knowing everything she had done.

“Do you hear me?” She said, climbing out of her chair and dropping down onto the bed. “If you were smarter, you would have seen this coming.”

She took a deep breath, turning back to the bedroom door and wondering what new task the saviour would have in mind for her. There was no longer any need for her to be anyone’s personal assistant, after all, but many advantages to a mole in C&R. It would be easy enough to go back and spin a story; that Nari really had gone forever and Driver Kim had been perfectly fine when she last saw him. 

Before long, she had invented the full sequence of events: Nari sobbing as she packed her bag, a cancelled appointment, an argument in the back of Driver Kim’s car. Juyeon’s lips trembling as she told Jumin that she had  _ tried to stop her _ .

It was a good plan, though one that shattered as Nari’s hand began to twitch beside her. Juyeon’s heart raced even as she reassured herself that it was little more than a muscle twitch, common after death.

Even so, she reached for the inside of Nari’s wrist; feeling for a pulse and grabbing at her neck when one came through, faint and yet earth-shatteringly loud across her senses.

“No, no, no, no,” she muttered, feeling at Nari’s jawline and cursing at the pulse there too.

Nari was alive, but barely and left alone would surely die. There was no need for anyone to know otherwise; within a matter of hours she would be buried beneath a few feet of soil. She was the last person in the room, though, and anyone discovered the truth in the meantime, she would be the first to face questioning.

The saviour’s words were as clear in her mind as when she first heard them: Nari Song might have been her favourite if she lived. Juyeon had longed for the saviour to say the same of her, to pat her on the head and say she cared for her more than any other acolyte. More than any other person. Nari’s death left her unchallenged, but now. Now she had to think fast.

Her first response was to grab a pillow from the other side of the bed, clutching it between her fingers and sitting up onto her knees so that she straddled Nari. A couple of seconds was all it would take, but her hands shook and she tossed it aside.

“This is all your fault,” she snapped. “You...you-”

She remembered going for breakfast on her way to the penthouse and picking up bubble tea for Nari instead; remembered spraying her scarf with testers of the perfume she wore.

“I hate you,” she said, climbing off the bed and kicking at the chair. “How could you...I…”

She knew what she had to do. It was all she could think about as she dried her tears and tidied up her hair and makeup. The answer had been obvious from the beginning, though she took a deep breath as she reached for the door handle.

* * *

After Rika’s departure, Jihyun curled up on the floor of his cell, hugging his knees to his chest and murmuring the same word over and over. At first his protests were loud and passionate, though now they were little more than a whimper against the quiet of the dungeon.

Only now did he realise the weight of all of his bad decisions. He wished he had kept hold of his phone; dismissed Nari from the RFA. He wished he had ignored her on the messenger and pushed her away in real life. He should have warned Jumin when he had the chance; showed him the picture sent to his phone.

He clenched his hands into fists, refusing to acknowledge that she would go to the grave believing him to be a good man. She would never know how many different ways he had betrayed her, nor could she ever forgive him. He was ashamed of every indecent thought he had about her. He wondered if he would ever get the chance to explain everything to Jumin; Jumin who offered his heart so rarely, only to offer it to Nari without question. Jihyun did not even want to think about what her death would do to him. What it would do to them both.

When someone threw open the dungeon door, he did not bother to turn over and look, instead picking out every flaw in the bricks in front of him.

“Pssst!”

Someone reached for the bars of his cell.

“Hey, photographer guy!”

Jihyun rolled over onto his side and up into a sitting position, heart skipping a beat when he saw Vanderwood standing where Rika had not too long ago.

“Vanderwood,” he said, watching in disbelief as he crouched down onto one knee to pick the lock. “What are you doing here?”

“Do you even have to ask?” 

Jihyun’s heart sank at the realisation that he had left Luciel so suddenly and was a fool to believe he would not follow.

“I see,” he said, the regret bleeding into his voice.

“Where are they keeping the girl?”

Vanderwood got to his feet with a satisfied smirk as the lock clicked and fell open. He spotted Jihyun’s expression only as he opened the cell door.

“Oh,” he said, the smirk dissolving. “I...see.”

“Where’s Luciel?”

Before he could answer him, though, the dungeon door opened a second time and before he knew it, Jihyun had thrown himself back inside his cell and Vanderwood had disappeared as if he had never been standing there at all.

The person to approach his cell was perhaps the last he might have expected: Juyeon, clutching something in her arms. At the sight of her, Driver Kim let out a choking sound and cowered in the corner of his own cell, leaving Jihyun with no doubts of her intentions.

Rika had chosen Nari as her plaything and now that she was gone only he was acceptable. 

“Get up,” said Juyeon, opening the cell door and throwing a set of robes at him. Then, off his confused expression, “ _ now! _ ”

Surely she did not mean to indoctrinate him?

Jihyun slipped on the robes, grimacing at the knowledge that he was so ready to die that the thought of surviving left him nervous. Did Rika plan for him to become an insider at the RFA? He could not fathom what she had in mind for him beyond breaking him little by little.

“Where… are you taking me?”

“Shut up and follow me.”

With that, Juyeon turned back to the basement door, leaving Jihyun to glance back over his shoulder as he followed her instructions. Vanderwood had hidden himself in one of the few vacant cells and motioned at the other, occupied ones, lockpick in hand.

Jihyun nodded his approval, suddenly realising that it might be the last time they saw one another. There was so much he had left to say; so many apologies he had to make, but nothing he could do without alerting Juyeon to an intruder. In the end, he clenched his fists, took a deep breath and turned towards the stairs, focussing on Juyeon’s retreating form and what little light shone through from the other side of the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> He gets better


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter concludes references to gunfire and choking. Please bear this in mind and be safe.

**SIX YEARS AGO**

_ Thank god I’m pretty _

At some point, though when exactly Juyeon could not recall, it had become her mantra. At any given failed grade, push to the shoulder or insult, she would dig her nails into her palms and remember what truly mattered. 

_ Thank god I’m pretty. _

In that moment, though, she wasn’t pretty. Her mascara was running and her hair out of place. She didn’t blame her manager for sitting and staring as she barreled into her office without bothering to knock or even apologise.

When it came to the entertainment industry, a conversation with Miss Yoo was something of a rite of passage. She had been in the industry for much longer than anyone remembered, scouting the youngsters most deserving of spotlight. Any idol to cross her path spoke of her in the same affectionate manner that they might a grandmother or favourite aunt. Up until recently, Juyeon had never questioned it, taking note of her advanced years and shrivelled frame.

The reality was somewhat different, though, and Juyeon cursed her own naivety. The real Miss Yoo had bony fingers and a shrill voice, almost always on the lookout for growing waistlines and bad posture. Her influence ran far and wide like the roots of an ancient tree and, naturally, no one with an ounce of sense bad mouthed her.

Juyeon accepted her terrible personality and demands, reassuring herself of her incredible luck. She was pretty: a natural born advantage to the competition and Miss Yoo’s good graces.

In theory, anyway.

The moment she crashed through the office door, Miss Yoo rose to her feet with a face like thunder. 

“What is the meaning of this?”

Juyeon dropped to her knees, thoughts scrambled and lungs burning from her sprint. She knew better than to keep Miss Yoo waiting, however.

“M-M Mr Kang,” she stammered, wringing her hands in her lap. “He…”

An hour or so earlier, she had pushed the button for the lift, checking her reflection in a hand mirror all the while. She had not been able to believe her luck, trembling as Miss Yoo adjusted her collar.

If Miss Yoo was a rite of passage, it was to Producer Kang. His name was synonymous with the rich and famous; his studio the site of masterpieces. His time was a luxury few but the truly gifted could afford, and Juyeon could scarcely believe her luck when he asked Miss Yoo for a meeting.

_ Thank god I’m pretty,  _ she thought to herself, applying an extra layer of makeup and pretending to be gracious.

“Remember,” Miss Yoo warned her. “Just keep him happy.”

And keep him happy she had, laughing at each one of his awful jokes and giving him the sweetest of replies when he asked why exactly it was she wanted to be famous. She eyed him coyly, pretending to blush and consider her response as if she had not practised a dozen times or more.

“I want to make the world a kinder place,” she said, “full of happiness and big smiles.”

Her heart swelled with pride when he laughed heartily, approving of her answer. The satisfaction was only temporarily, though, for he moved the hand he had previously positioned on his knee across to hers. In her imagination, she jumped to her feet and told Producer Kang exactly what she thought of him, slapped him across the face for disrespecting her so and daring to touch her. She did not know what she expected Miss Yoo to say to her after barging into her office, but she watched expectantly nonetheless.

Ultimately, Juyeon was the one to receive a short, sharp slap across the lips, so forcefully that Miss Yoo’s ring grazed the skin and the girl she had been speaking to flinched at the sound.

“Are you an idiot?” Miss Yoo snapped, tone venomous and worlds apart from the matronly, caring woman who took youngsters under her wing. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“P-please Miss Yoo,” she said, “he-“

“Didn’t I tell you to make him happy? What part of that did you misunderstand?”

Her blood ran cold at the realisation that Miss Yoo had known all along that such a thing was a possibility, perhaps even known for certain. It was far from a secret that Miss Yoo began her career as an idol; she liked to remind clients of the fact, reminding them whenever they protested a particular outfit or broke the rules of their assigned diets that they did not know how lucky they were. 

“I…Please...Miss Yoo…”

The idea of returning to the room left shivers running up her spine. She was desperate to change into different clothes, to shower away his touch. Miss Yoo had no sympathy, however.

“Do you know how lucky you are to have this opportunity? Do you know how hard I worked for this meeting?”

“I’m sorry, Miss Yoo,” 

Juyeon pressed her forehead to the ground, willing Miss Yoo to put on her false, industry smile and fix everything, but instead she grabbed her by the shoulder.

“There is still fixable,” she said, “fix your makeup; I’ll make tea.”

“B-but,” Juyeon shivered against her grip, “I don’t-“

“ _ Now _ !”

And so it was that Juyeon reapplied her makeup in the bathroom mirror, wiping away the tear stains and practising her posture. This time she put it on darker and several shades more dramatic, so grotesquely artificial that she didn’t recognise herself beneath it.

“Thank god I’m pretty,” she muttered to herself. Men were more forgiving of pretty girls.

She kissed the mirror and understood, the wine red imprint of her lips on the glass equally as imprinted on her imagination.

* * *

**SEVERAL YEARS LATER**

If he was honest, Jihyun had expected Juyeon to spend their trip bragging. She had enjoyed having him shoved into the dungeons almost too much, yet this time around she said nothing beyond an irritated sigh and occasional urge for him to hurry up. 

She led him up a couple of floors, through corridors he had never seen in prior explorations of the castle. This new section matched the decor of every other, but it left the hair on the back of his neck standing on end. Jihyun had come to believe in intuition far more than he had in previous years, in listening to the quivers of his heart and churning of his stomach. Perhaps it was because of Nari’s death that every tile and picture frame seemed more foreboding than usual – as if he knew that something terrible had happened there. He wondered if she had walked that floor before him.

Juyeon led him to a bedroom and slammed the door shut behind them. He watched her in confusion, imagination running wild. He had expected a torture chamber; a ritual chamber. Being locked in a bedroom with Juyeon was so unexpected that it was almost absurd.

The shock must have transferred to his face, for Juyeon seemed even more annoyed by him than usual.

“Over there!” She snapped, pointing to something behind him.

At first he did not know precisely what it was she pointed to. The room was cluttered with trinkets and gaudy furniture; a claw footed mirror in one corner and mahogany dresser in another. He looked at the bed last of all and rushed towards it once he realised her intention.

“Nari!” He cried out, even though he knew she could not hear him..”Nari, wha-”

Jihyun had never gotten used to seeing the dead; the sight of his mother screaming into the fire was all but carved into his imagination. Nari appeared to be sleeping, a tranquil expression across her face and still warm to the touch.

“Why are you showing me this?” He asked, dropping to his knees and reaching for her hand. 

It almost seemed fitting that they should force him to see her; having him confront the consequences of his mistakes and letting him live with the guilt.

“Get a hold of yourself,” sighed Juyeon, seemingly bored by the sight of him, “she isn’t dead.”

At first he did not believe it. Rika had been so thoroughly convinced when she told him and he could not fathom why she would lie. He supposed it was not out of the realms of possibility that she did so to leave him without a reason to resist, but he had only ever known her enjoy resistance. To her there was no satisfaction without a struggle. He held a hand over Nari’s lips anyway, retracting it the moment he felt her breathe.

“W-“ He said, mind going blank. “What’s the meaning of this?”

The more he thought about it, the more confused he became. If Rika really had intended for him to be sent there, why wasn’t she there to laugh at his sorrow? Why had Juyeon insisted he leave the dungeons in robes, where among other things, no one they passed would recognise him?

“Here’s my offer,” she said, as if in response. “You take her, tell everyone that you’re taking her for a burial. I’ll even escort you to the front doors.”

“And in exchange?”

“In exchange, don’t tell a soul that it was me who helped you.”

Jihyun stared her down, wondering if he was walking into a trap.

“Whose side are you on?” 

Juyeon laughed, leaning over to pull back the covers and lift Nari up by the shoulders.

“Mine, of course.” 

Jihyun hoisted Nari into his arms, her head lolling against his shoulder. 

“That’ll get awfully lonely one day.”

“Are you speaking from experience?”

She smirked, arms folded, challenging him to answer. He considered how different they were, and yet how similar they might have been in different circumstances. He had taken the burden of all his mistakes with the intention of protecting the others from both the truth and the consequences. 

“No,” he said. “Regret.”

* * *

Finding the control room was easy enough. Less so was getting there unnoticed. What should have been an easy journey down a single flight of stairs became one of steady creeping, peering around corners and picking locks. It took him almost twenty minutes to get there and several more to get his bearings. He had expected there to be a more complicated lock than a simple electronic one, for a tripwire or someone inside.

The room itself was almost entirely dark, illuminated only by the cold glow of multiple screens. Upon further examination, he realised that they showed different areas of the castle. Most chilling of all was the lone screen displaying Jumin’s office at C&R. Seven shuddered as he reached for the keyboard, noting how old and worn it actually was. 

It was difficult not to think of the last time he had entered the castle; the trackers he had installed and more. The castle’s hardware was ancient in comparison to what he was used to and miles apart from what he had expected when first hacking their systems six months before. He wondered at the white haired man that he had seen all of that time ago; the suspicions that had haunted him ever since. Every map he had examined, every kilobyte of data he had analysed, all of it paled in comparison to how much he considered that day. He wanted to believe Saeran was a hostage as opposed to the alternative, but the more he came to understand Mint Eye, the more he hated himself for doing so.

As expected of the strange hacker, most of his efforts had amounted to nothing; his trackers and other algorithms countered and rendered useless. He counted his blessings that the strange hacker was not present, and for his foresight several months ago. Having suspected the hacker would react aggressively, most of his attacks on the system were purely superficial. His real plan was camouflaged in amongst the main drivers, hidden in plain sight and easily missed by the more obvious of his attacks. Over the past six months it had been steadily cataloging and downloading information ready for export.

The following few minutes were a matter of bypassing the current security systems to access the programme he had gone to such great lengths to hide.

The steady download of data to his laptop was almost unbearable to watch, so he occupied himself by checking the newer system entries and examining what security footage he could find. Some cameras were situated outside of the castle, in a number of places he recognised and some that he did not.

“Hey, Vanderwood,” he said, tapping at his earpiece, “are you there?”

“Of course I’m here. What do you want?”

Seven scrolled through the footage, blood running cold at the sight of a camera in an office he did not know very well but an occupant he definitely did. He turned away from the screen, away from the stranger’s cold eyes, eyes of an identical shade to his own. 

The prime minister’s office was full of trinkets, photographs and more. Hiding a camera there was child's play.

A clunk through his earpiece dragged him back to his senses.

“Luciel?”

Seven sighed, shaking his head and glancing across at the progress of his download. 

“Time’s-

* * *

-up.”

Up until recently, Jumin hadn’t the luxury of watching the clock at work. Between phone calls, meetings, analytics and more, he lost track of time more often than not. After Elizabeth’s arrival in his life and Nari’s a short time later, he caught himself chancing side glances at the clock when the opportunity arose. He was not sure which was worse: the idea that Elizabeth might be lonely without him or that he might be lonely without Nari.

He knew immediately when Nari had been missing for 24 hours and ghosted his fingers across the phone dial. Realistically speaking, he knew he should report her absence to the police, but hesitated every time he reached to do so. Perhaps she was not missing, but gone.

The previous night, he barely slept, unable to think of anything but the moment Elizabeth went missing. He did not see her leave and only heard of it after the fact, which at the time ultimately haunted him the most. He had believed it to be the worst thing to ever befall him, worse than crashing a toy car or feeling a stepmother’s hand in his hair. Without Elizabeth he felt incomplete, as if he no longer understood himself or anyone around him. The world was a fog of white noise and faces he did not know and only in retrospect did he realise that it could have been much worse. Back then, he had been overwhelmed in ways previously unknown to him, but one voice broke through the fog where others were indiscernible.

With Nari gone, the world was unfamiliar again. He wished he had spoken to his father earlier, had considered her perspective far more. 

Shortly after after the first RFA party he followed her through the organised chaos of food vendors and market stalls, accepting the dumplings and chicken she thrust in his direction. He had never bought food from a street vendor before and watched in bewilderment as she gobbled down a spicy rice cake.

“You know… I have chefs,” he said, taking in the masses of people around them, each speaking at once and drowning out even his own words.

He was out of his depth and did not know how it was Nari seemed so comfortable, lifting a rice cake to his lips with a grin. He was happy to have there, a hand to hold onto as he navigated the unknown. It had not occurred to him that she would need one too; that higher society might be just as daunting to an outsider.

He wanted nothing more to tell her exactly that, leaving her voicemail message after voicemail message urging her to call him back at her earliest convenience. He wondered if the panic transferred to his voice, grateful that he did not have to listen to them.

“Time’s up,” he muttered again, picking up the phone receiver and dialling. He sat still, listening over his desk and listening to the echo of the dial tone.

Unbeknownst to him, the phone he called had long since been abandoned, ringing for no one at the bottom of a river.

_ You’ve reached V. For business enquiries please contact my manager, Daeshim Ryu. Anything else, please leave a message after the tone. _

* * *

Jihyun did not know exactly how long he had been inside of the castle. It sat in such an isolated area, with next to no hints that there was any world beyond the gates.

It was raining when Juyeon opened the front door and she huffed in annoyance at the sight.

“If anyone stops you, tell them you’re taking her for burial,” she said. “From here, you’re on your own.”

“Afraid of a little rain?”

He supposed he should thank her, though he wasn’t sure if it was appropriate under the circumstances. She had made it quite clear that not only were her motives self serving, but she wanted no credit. 

For a moment they stood there in an awkward sort of silence, each considering the fact that neither wished to see the other again, nor did they wish one another well.

“So then,” said Jihyun, “I-“

He meant to wish her good health, but she slammed the door behind him before he could say a word. Something about it made him smile and he adjusted Nari’s weight before rushing towards the gates, footfalls loud against the rain soaked path.

He did not know where exactly he planned to go from there, though could think of two options. One, the outhouse he had taken refuge in before or, alternatively, to go that bit further to his car. He did not relish the idea of waiting in the outhouse, especially considering it was only a matter of time before Rika and the other acolytes came looking for them, but could think of no way to access his car without leaving Nari exposed to the elements.

The moment he stepped through the gate, though, someone shot out a fist and struck a hard right hook to his nose. It left him dazed and barreling to the ground, instinctively reaching out to brace himself and dropping Nari in the attempt.

“I-“ He said, squinting out at the assailant, only to drag back his hood when he saw them. “ _ Luciel _ ?!”

Luciel, it seemed, was just as surprised to see him.

“V?” He said, glancing from the cult robes to the unconscious Nari. “What’s going on? I thought you were one of them!”

“What are you doing here?” Jihyun asked, lifting Nari over his shoulder with one hand and accepting Luciel’s with the other.

“We can talk about it later. What happened to Nari?”

Jihyun glanced down into her face, lamenting the fact that he did not know for sure. Rika had told him only the bare minimum of what had actually happened between them.

“I don’t know,” he said, “some form of poison, I think.”

At the mention of poison, Luciel leaned over, bringing his face so close to Nari’s that for a moment Jihyun wondered if he meant to kiss her. Instead he recoiled, eyes wide and suddenly ashen.

“How long ago did it happen?”

“I’m not sure, maybe an hour?”

“Sssh…” Luciel did not go so far as to curse out loud, but Jihyun could tell he meant to. Unfortunately, he also knew that Luciel had studied poisons.

“How bad is it?”

“We need to get her to a hospital right away,” he said, unzipping his hoodie and arranging it around Nari’s shoulders to shield her from the rain that drenched them both. Only a matter of moments later, though, he growled in annoyance and tore at his hair. “No…there’s not enough time.”

“Luciel.”

It was just his luck that even after everything she still might die.

“That’ll take too long,” Luciel murmured, as if he had not heard him.

“ _ Luciel _ .”

“Sorry, sorry,” he shook his head as if coming out of a trance, “we should get her to the safe house right away. It’s not ideal, but we should be able to stabilise her at least.”

“My car’s not far from here; let’s go.”

Luciel turned back towards the castle, conflict playing out across his face. Jihyun knew the reasons-that it was the closest they had ever been to rescuing his brother. He was not sure how to tell him about what he had seen in the garden.

“About Saeran,” he said, recalling the white flowers he placed in Nari’s hair. “Luciel, I-“

He never got to finish, though, for a strange sound reached his ears and the two of them both glanced around the area to identify the source. It sounded like metal, more specifically metal being dragged along the ground, much like a clumsily adjusted tripod or chair.

“What’s that?”

“I’m not sure,” said Jihyun, heart racing, “but we should get out of here.”

The moment he said it, Luciel froze in place, gaze fixed on something beyond the palace gates. Jihyun peered to see, only for every hair on the back of his neck to stand up on end. It was Saeran, though he did not look nearly so composed as when he saw him last. Before he had been immaculate, not a single hair out of place and a flower in his pin. Now he dragged a shovel across the ground, his overcoat abandoned and shirt filthy with a mixture of blood, rain and dirt. His hair was soaked through, plastered against his face like finger bones.

* * *

Ray could not think of a finer place to bury Nari than in the flowerbed. She would sleep surrounded by the sweet scent of flowers with sunlight beaming on her face. What’s more, the ground there was softer and easier to dig, leaving him with a decent grave in half the time it would at the back of the castle.

He would need to take a bath and change his clothes before speaking to the Saviour, and that was without mention of the other acolytes who lay bleeding in unmarked graves. She would likely have questions, none of which he felt like answering.

He got as far as the gates before stopping in his tracks, having heard voices a short distance away. Acolytes did not usually speak to one another in such frantic tones and for a moment he wondered if word had gotten round about the other believers who now lay battered and bruised in the unnamed grave originally intended for Nari.

He stopped in his tracks at the sight before him. Someone in believer robes, with Nari’s body in their arms. Another person stood beside them, with such bright red hair that it left his stomach fluttering with a combination of anxiety and rage.

_ It was him.  _

_ It had to be him. _

All at once he recalled hollow words, ice cream so sweet that it left him feeling sick, the burn of ropes around his legs.

_ I’ll set you free before we become adults. _

_ Liar _

He stormed over there as quicky as he could.

_ Liar _

He lifted the shovel, ready to take a swing. 

_ LIAR _

“Saeran,” the redhead called out, taking a slow step forward as if he didn’t see the shovel in his arms.

_ That’s not my name. _

He recalled cold steel against his body; the burn of elixir on his tongue.

“You can be Ray when you’re a good boy,” the Saviour had told him and he remembered the exact moment he understood the truth. Saeran was worthless, an airhead and worse. He deserved to be left behind and broken.

But Saeran was not his name anymore. He was Ray, the Saviour’s sword and shield, better than Saeran could ever be.

He clutched the shovel tighter, standing in place and completely disregarding the redhead’s approach.

“I should have known it would be you,” he spat. “You take everything...ruin everything.”

He couldn’t believe that once, long ago he had trusted him, even loved him. Every day, he had waited for Saeyoung to set him free, and every day he never came. 

“Saeran,” said the redhead, reaching out to pull him close, only to yelp and jump back as he swung for his kneecaps. The redhead stumbled in the mud, barely managing to secure his footing.

“Saeran,” he said, grabbing for the wall. “I’ve come to take you home.”

Home? 

Ray wondered what home he meant. 

_ Whump _

Another swing of the shovel sent the redhead to his knees, Ray coming ever closer and raising the metal over his head.

He meant to hit his skull and break bone, free himself forever from his past weaknesses. The redhead looked so young trembling there on the ground, almost identical to the way he looked in childhood. That face reminded him of terrible things and it left him sick to his stomach.

Of course he meant to take Nari away. He did not know what else he had expected.

“Luciel, get away from him!”

Ray looked across for the owner of the voice, freezing in place when he saw the photographer.

_ Should’ve known. _

The redhead stayed in place, looking him in the eye. Ray lowered the shovel with a roar, though it never made contact with bone, for he threw it at his feet instead and reached for the redhead’s throat.

“Because of you,” he cried, “everything is ruined because of  _ you _ !”

_ When will I be free? _

_ When will you stop taking away the things I love? _

The redhead spluttered out a few syllables, only for Ray to tighten his grip.

“Don’t you want us to be happy? No...don’t tell me...I won’t fall for any more of your lies!”

“Saeran,” the photographer called, “let him go...this isn’t you!”

“Admit it,” Ray snarled at the redhead, as if he had not said anything, “you regret abandoning me. You regret leaving me alone with her while you changed your name.”

_ Saeyoung abandoned me _

_ V abandoned me _

_ Now they mean to take Nari away from me too. _

“S-“ 

Ray choked harder, a grin creeping across his features.

“You can’t fool me, no matter what you say,” he said, “no one can hurt me now.”

“Saeran, can’t you see that Rika is manipulating you?”

“Shut up! She warned me you would say that,” he said, “your lies don’t work on me. Tell me… why do you keep interfering in her work? Don’t you want us all to be happy.. in a world without pain?”

“That world doesn’t exist! Pain is how you know you’re alive!”

“Liar!” Saeran screamed. “I’ve seen it...I’ve touched it.”

He sucked in a deep breath, smile dissolving.

“Give Nari back to me,” he said.

“What?”

He had planned to enter the paradise with her; to take her hand at the eternal party. She was so very lost and he could not stand to see it. Now that she was dead, she would never see the fruits of her endeavors. 

“What good is she to you now that you’ve ruined her? She is spoiled because of you; you fed her so many lies that she did not know how to truly be happy. She didn't understand the reason for her suffering in this world.”

“Saeran, you’re not making sense!”

_ I won’t allow her to leave me as well. _

He did not register the BANG until long after it had happened. It was the pain that hit him first, a sharp burning pain in his shoulder that left him retracting his hands from the redhead’s neck and fumbling to stop his own bleeding.

“Saeran!!!” The redhead screamed, looking beyond the gates to a van that had not been there before. It belonged to the saviour in case of emergency evacuations, but the man peering out of it was no acolyte. He wore a purple coat and held a rifle, ready to fire a bullet at any moment.

Only then did Ray realise that he had been shot.

The next few moments were a blur; Ray dropping to his knees and thrashing at the redhead on any of his attempts to reach out. He heard himself say that he would kill him, felt himself reaching through the dirt for the shovel.

Most of all, he remembered both the photographer and the stranger in purple screaming for Saeyoung to leave, acolytes spilling out of the castle at the sound of gunshots.

“I’ll come back for you,” the redhead told him, even as he lifted the shovel with his good arm. “I’ll come back! Please, just a little longer.”

And then he was gone, sprinting through the castle gates and leaping into the back of the van.

Ray watched him leave and clutched his shoulder, the reality of what had transpired settling in only slowly.

“Mr Ray!” 

“Mr Ray are you alright? Can you stand?”

He followed them numbly, barely picking out their individual voices. One thought circulated his thoughts continuously; that he had made a mistake like the airhead he was.

“I’m not Ray,” he slurred over and over. “I’m not…”

He did not deserve to be Ray anymore.

The truth was, he had always been Saeran.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is the last one! After that there will be an epilogue tying everything up. It looks very weird to say eleven when there's actually going to be ten, but otherwise I would have to post the epilogue as a different fic, which... would be even more confusing. 
> 
> Spoilers: the epilogue is a scene from one of the other vabverse fics!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains fire, mentions of death and a stabbing.

When the time came to pick out a getaway vehicle, Vanderwood chose the van for its size and bulletproof frame. It had plenty of room for the rescued agents without cramming them against one another like sardines while also being cramped enough to avoid them crashing into one another with every sharp turn.

Adding Seven, the photographer guy and planner girl was pushing it, but spending an extra minute or two to adjust their positions simply was not an option. The moment he shut the doors behind them, he barked at the driver guy to accelerate and fast. He did not need telling twice, even if he did cry out at the sight of the planner girl.

Only a short while earlier, Vanderwood had loaded his gun and asked for a volunteer to drive the van while he kept an eye out for any hostiles. The windscreen was the most vulnerable area of the entire vehicle and he did not expect anyone to actually step forward. The driver guy, though, volunteered without a moment’s hesitation. 

“Miss Song,” he had said, “I’ll do it for Miss Song.”

He did not expect to see her again and, after hearing accounts from the prisoners that could speak, Vanderwood understood why. It all sounded like something from a bad spy movie: cultists, poisons and kidnap. When he actually saw the photographer guy in cultist robes, he came very close to shooting him through the shoulder and only held back because of the person in his arms: a person who at some point had put on Seven’s jacket.

“What the hell happened to her?” He asked as the photographer guy carefully lowered her to the floor of the van, doors slamming shut behind them. 

“Poison. Luciel said…”

They glanced across at Seven, who was white as a sheet and sat in silence on the floor. He barely reacted to the sudden acceleration and Vanderwood sighed as he ran his fingers through his hair.

“What a mess.”

* * *

“Hmm...ugh...kkugh..hhh…”

Truthfully, Juyeon knew exactly why the saviour wept. She knew even before Believer A632 came to find her, claiming the saviour waited in the throne room with an important announcement. It was unusual for her to summon every believer into one place and therefore likely to be a serious matter, which left just one possibility. 

Juyeon spent the trip ignoring the din of her surrounding acolytes, preparing herself for what might await her. As it turned out, she need not have bothered, for the shock on her face when she got there was completely genuine. The saviour perched on her throne in floods of tears, all while Ray kneeled before her, clutching at his shoulder.

“Why do you cry, Saviour?” She asked as she kneeled beside Ray, eyes widening at the blood seeping through his shirt and between his fingers. 

Her mind raced with possibilities; had Ray intercepted V? Worse, had V fought back? Given V had no weapons when she released him and Nari in his arms, it was unlikely to say the least.

“Juyeon,” she said, sighing. “Oh, poor Juyeon.”

“I’m sorry, saviour,” said Ray, before lowering his head to the ground as if he had already apologised several times over.

The Saviour did not acknowledge his apology, instead solemnly rising to her feet to address the room.

“Children,” she said, “long have I feared that this day would come. V has escaped our walls, leaving his poison to infect the world. It is only a matter of time before he summons others and they try to silence us forever.”

A hubbub broke out, only to fall into silence when she raised her hand.

“Fear not,” she said. “I would never leave true believers behind! I made preparations in the event of such a catastrophe. This evening we shall depart for site B. Juyeon, I place you in charge of evacuation. Ray-“

“Yes, Saviour?”

“I trust that you made the necessary arrangements during Miss Song’s stay?”

“Of course, Saviour,” he said. “I have the relevant data.”

“Excellent,” said the Saviour, descending the steps from her throne and moving to leave the room, acolytes parting like the red sea as she passed. “In that case, we have work to do.”

“What do you mean to do, Saviour?” 

The question crossed her lips before Juyeon realised what she had done. Within seconds everyone in the room was looking at her, though not as she would have liked.

She worried that she had offended the Saviour and racked her brains for an excuse or apology. She had been doing so well up until that moment and there had to be some way to rectify her mistake.

The Saviour smiled though, her tears glistening in the candlelight.

“We stand on the precipice of change. Today will decide our place in this world,” she said. “I made my choice long ago. I wonder if V can say the same.”

* * *

_ Where is he? _

Nari took a sip of her champagne and shielded her face from the flash of several cameras. 

“Mrs Han! This way! Mrs Han, can we take a statement?”

Nari could not discern between one voice and another and shook her head in no particular direction before scanning the various crowds. She was not sure exactly when she had lost track of Jumin; one minute he was standing beside her and the next she was quite alone. As such, it was something of a relief to see Yoosung standing by the buffet table, helping himself to finger foods.

“Excuse me,” she murmured, setting down her glass and walking towards him, wondering if he had seen Jumin recently and could point her in the right direction.

“Yoosung,” she said, “hey, Y-“

When she reached him he was trying and failing to pick up a quiche with a cocktail stick, though he dropped it as if burned at the sound of her voice.

“Don’t worry,” she laughed, taking in his guilty look. “It’s only me!”

“I thought you were with catering,” he said, chancing a look around the room before swiping two quiches onto his plate. “They’re strict about portions.”

“Do you want me to talk to them? There’s plenty of food.”

“Oh, it’s no bother,” he said, flushing a bright pink. “I wouldn’t want to put you out.”

“I don’t mind,” she said. “By the way, have you seen Jumin?”

“Jumin? Oh, are you here with C&R?”

At first she thought she had misheard him, for he spoke with his mouth full and immediately wiped his lips off her expression of confusion, most likely misconstruing it as one of disapproval at his table manners.

“Sorry,” he said, “are you here with C&R?”

She supposed that even if they had chatted every day on the messenger, it was their first time seeing one another in person. The more she thought about it, the more understandable it was that he did not recognise her immediately even if they had talked almost every day on the messenger.

“No,” she said, “it’s me, Nari.”

Her heart sank at the realisation that he still appeared none the wiser.

“The _ party planner _ ?” 

“Oh!” He cried out, eyes suddenly shining with familiarity. “She’s over there!”

_ Over there? _

Nari turned to look in the direction he pointed, only for her blood to run cold when she saw. Jaehee standing at a far table checking off guests from a clipboard. Peering over her shoulder was a woman with golden hair and a smile she would recognise until her dying day.

“R- _ Rika _ ?!” She gasped, colour draining from her face. “I don’t...do you see her?”

What was she doing there? As far as the RFA knew, she was dead.

“Of course,” smiled Yoosung, “she’s the party planner.”

“But she’s…”

_ Dead  _ seemed a ridiculous thing to say, considering their present circumstances, but it was the only one that came to mind. She never got to say it, though, for Zen weaved his way through the crowds a matter of moments later.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he said to Yoosung, “come on! V wants to take a group shot!”

Yoosung sighed and lowered his plate, clearly more excited by the quiches than any picture. It was so like him that Nari could not help but laugh.

“I’ll see you later,” he said, waving her goodbye as he followed Zen through the crowds. “It was nice to meet you, Nari!”

By then, Nari was sure they were playing some kind of prank, even if she couldn’t fathom why.

“Come on, guys,” she said, two steps behind them, “it’s me...Nari.”

Neither responded, though, instead making a beeline for an alcove across the hall. Jaehee and Rika were taking their places, while Jumin peered through V’s camera lens, a glass of wine in one hand. Nari wanted nothing more than to run into his arms, but settled for touching a hand to his shoulder.

“Jumin,” she said, hoping he would have an explanation one way or another. “Jumin, I-“

That moment confirmed her worst fears, for Jumin turned to her without an ounce of recognition.

“Ah,” he said, “I will be taking questions from the presses shortly.”

_ Presses?  _ Did he think she was a journalist?

“Jumin,” she whispered, “don’t you recognise me? Nari?”

He took a moment to consider her, Yoosung and Zen taking their places with the rest of the group.

“Hmmm...Nari,” he said, considering every syllable, only to shake his head at the sound of V’s voice.

“Everyone, places!”

“My apologies,” he said, shrugging off her touch, “please excuse me.”

Nari watched in silence as he smoothed down his suit before joining the rest of the RFA. Rika sat in the center, Yoosung and Jaehee on her left and right, with Seven, Zen and Jumin standing at the back. If it was a joke, she decided, it was a cruel one.

“Everyone say cheese!” V called out, peering down the camera. 

“Cheese!” 

Her heart skipped a beat at the clicking of the camera shutter. One moment, they beamed at V and the next only Rika smiled at all. The surrounding RFA lay dead at her feet, faces indiscernible and smeared with blood.

Nari clapped both hands over her mouth, suffocating the scream threatening to cross her lips. She turned to V, trembling and afraid for what might greet her. V was all in one piece, however, smiling down the camera lens as if he saw nothing unusual.

“V,” she gasped, “what are you doing?”

He did not reply and the chaos of the surrounding party hall echoed on her senses. She clasped her hands over her ears, falling to her knees and squeezing her eyes shut.

“No,” she murmured, so quietly that only she could hear. “No, stop…”

Her stomach lurched, body suddenly as cold as ice and someone calling her name from the other side of the room.

_ Nari, Nari wake up. _

She wished she was dreaming, glancing around the party hall and digging her nails into her hair as the other guests continued to mingle as if nothing was happening.

_ Nari _

She lowered her head down to the floor, eyes shut and willing it to be over.

“Nari,” the strange voice continued. “You’re screaming.”

Slowly, she opened her eyes. Wherever she was now, it wasn’t the party hall. She was in a bed of some sort, with a pounding headache and sheen of sweat across her forehead. Her arms and legs were heavy and her throat dry; a bitter taste in her mouth.

“Where,” she rasped, voice hoarse and words painful. “Where am I?”

Someone was sitting next to the bed, someone who smelled of cigarettes and whose voice was not in the least bit familiar.

“Bout time you woke up,” they said, face coming into focus.

It was a man she had never seen before, handsome in an unusual sort of way and hair tied up in a ponytail. He reached into a bowl beside him and squeezed the excess water out of a cloth inside of it before placing it across her forehead.

Nari remembered the bloodstained party hall and shuddered at the damp compress. Perhaps she was still dreaming or worse. The stranger took in her expression and sighed deeply.

“You’re in a safe house,” he said. “What do you remember?”

Nari’s thoughts and memories were muddled; the events of the past few days returning to her slowly and then all at once. She dragged herself into a sitting position, the cloth on her head falling to her lap in the process.

“Rika,” she said, squinting at the stranger. “She-we-what happened?”

She remembered everything fading to black; the burn of chemicals against her throat. Juyeon. She remembered Juyeon. Nari glanced around the room, heart racing as she tried to pick out any object that might be used as self defense if the occasion called for it.

“Who are you?” She demanded. “Why am I here?”

The stranger got up from his chair, walking across the room to a different table with a jug of water on it.

“My name is Vanderwood,” he said, filling one of the glasses.

“ _ Vanderwood _ ? You’re V-“

Nari stopped herself from saying what she was thinking; that the only Vanderwood she had ever heard of was Seven’s maid. However, from the look on Vanderwood’s face, she guessed that he had gotten that reaction more than once before.

“He told you I was a woman, didn’t he?”

Nari couldn’t help but laugh at the resignation in his voice.

“He did,” she said. “But if you’re  _ that _ Vanderwood…”

“I came with another agent,” he said, lowering the glass into her fingers. “You know him as Luciel.”

Suddenly every anecdote of Seven’s in regards to Mary Vanderwood the Third. She had always considered it odd that Seven worked in intelligence, but was happy to leave potentially sensitive data and documents lying around where his maid could find them.

Even so, she set aside the water. She had trusted Juyeon too, after all.

“Seven came to find me?” 

“Not exactly,” said Vanderwood. “The photographer guy came to find you. We’ve been investigating that castle for several months and it seems like they finally made a move.”

“V is here?” 

Nari didn’t know any other photographers. It had to be him.

“Can I speak to him?”

Somehow her question left Vanderwood looking even more tired.

“You can try,” he said. “He and Seven haven’t stopped arguing since we got here.”

At that, Nari pushed back the covers, head pounding and legs weak in what was becoming a familiar fashion. How long had they been drugging her? Had there even been a tour? There seemed to be no end to her questions, but the prospect of familiar faces was reassuring to say the least. V needed to know that Rika still lived, that the RFA was in danger.

_ Are you scared of being alone? _

_ We will not lie to you or ignore you, like Jumin and the rest of the RFA. _

Rika’s words still echoed in her mind and she tightened her hands into fists. Vanderwood reached for her shoulder as she wobbled on the spot, but she stumbled through the bedroom door before he could make contact.

Wherever she was, it looked a lot like a lodge, with threadbare furniture and photographs of boats on the wall. Outside of her own room was a hallway that branched off into a number of others, all of which were occupied by people she did not know. One of the other bedrooms had been converted into a makeshift infirmary, with audible groans of pain coming from within and the smell of antiseptic keen on her senses.

_ What happened here?  _ She wondered, watching as one stranger bandaged another’s leg.

“Mint Eye took a number of our agents,” said Vanderwood a little way behind her, as if reading her thoughts.

“Why?” 

“Most likely to prevent their secrets coming to light,” he said with a shrug, “though their leader tried to convert some of them to her cause for good measure. They’ll need a full psychiatric evaluation once we get out of here.”

“Rika,” Nari murmured, saddened by the revelation, but not shocked in the slightest. Ray’s descriptions of the saviour and her beliefs made a grim sort of sense in retrospect. She had certainly bought into it without realising.

Nari continued along the corridor, reaching an equally busy kitchen. She didn’t recognise the majority of the faces, but the one she did brought tears to her eyes.

“Driver Kim!” She called out, hobbling over and reaching out to embrace him. “I’m so glad you’re-"

He was shocked to see her at first, body tensing at her touch, only to relax when he actually saw her. She loosened her grip at the sight of the bruises across his face and gauze in his mouth.

“Miss Song,” he said, clutching her in his arms. “I’m so glad you’re alright.”

“What happened to you,” she whispered, his hands trembling even as he gripped her.

“Ah, I got into a tussle at the castle,” he chuckled, “nothing serious.”

“That’s certainly one way of putting it,” said Vanderwood. “Your guy here was our getaway driver. With skills like that, I’m amazed no one has ever scouted him for agency work.”

Driver Kim blushed at that, suddenly bashful.

“Ah, all of Mister Han’s personal staff are trained for hostage situations.”

He said it to reassure her, though hearing it stung. He would never have needed to use such training if he had not been the one to take her, after all.

In her quiet contemplation she picked up the muffled sound of voices outside, both of which she knew well. She had so many questions, so many gaps in her version of events, but every time she considered the answers, it was the bloodstained party hall that came to mind. Perhaps she was better seeing only a fraction of the picture, as V had only seen Rika in a pile of corpses.

She took a deep breath, though, and shoved the door open.

* * *

Jihyun was not sure he had ever seen Luciel so angry as after they returned to the lodge. According to Vanderwood they had gathered a fortune in data in their short stay at the castle: even without Luciel’s bot and hacking abilities, the rescued agents had a half dozen eye witness reports between them. Despite the relative success of the mission, though, Luciel made a beeline for their escape vehicle after the agents departed for the lodge.

“I have to go! Give me the keys!”

“Think clearly, Luciel, we barely made it out last time.”

“I  _ am _ thinking clearly, give me the keys!”

Luciel’s tone was not the same as it usually was; the happy go lucky tone replaced by a despair Jihyun had heard only once before.

Initially their conversation was little more than a disagreement, neither side raising their voice and the afternoon sun still warm against their backs. Dusk had long since fallen, though, and along with it had any facade of composure. Luciel’s words were desperate pleas, swipes in his general direction to try and snatch the keys from his hands. Jihyun kept his back to the vehicle, carefully observing Luciel’s movements.

“If I give you these keys, you’ll go back there.”

“I promised him! So did you! I can’t just leave him…”

“You’re no good to him rotting in a dungeon!”

“Fine,” said Luciel, clenching his fists and taking a couple of steps back. “Just... _ forget the car _ ; I’ll walk there!”

Luciel turned to storm off into the lodge, but froze in place at the figure in the doorway. Despite his complaints at being used as a nursemaid, Vanderwood had taken charge of of Nari’s care, reassuring everyone who actually knew her that with immediate attention she would be fine. To quote him almost verbatim, they would know her fate come nightfall.

They were long past sunset by then and Jihyun did not know why he was so surprised to see her alive, even if she was clearly still unwell. 

“Nari,” he said, meaning to run and embrace her and lift her up into his arms as he had before. The thought of her arms around his shoulders and breath against the back of his neck left his heart fluttering, but in the end he went only so far as to pat her on the shoulder.

“It’s good to see you’re alright,” he said and she smiled sadly, eyes darkened by something he could not identify.

“Rika, she-“ Nari’s body trembled as much as her words, grabbing onto the door frame in an attempt to steady herself.

“I know,” he said, reaching out an arm to her and glancing across at Luciel. “ _ We _ know.”

For months he had wondered about the RFA’s reaction to the truth about Rika. Jumin would fall silent even if his thoughts were loud. Jaehee would ask the most questions. Zen would be sympathetic where Yoosung would fall into denial. He knew Nari the least of all and, even after all of the time they had spent together during his recovery, he dared not presume to know how she would receive the knowledge. It did not help that at varying points he had suspected her of being involved.

In the end, her reaction was one of cool indifference, accepting the revelation as she might an announcement of the weather.

“I see,” she said. “How long?”

“Since...” 

The words stuck in his throat, guilt running through him like adrenaline.

_ Since before we met you. _

“A while,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I-“

Luciel sighed at his apologies before heading back into the warmth of the lodge, whether to brood or plot an escape Jihyun did not know. 

“Tell me everything,” said Nari, spotting the tension between them and squeezing his arm. “Beginning to end.”

Jihyun wondered if he would recognise himself without the weight of the world on his shoulders. Guilt and retrospect had formed so much of his personality that he no longer remembered a time before. 

He helped her down the steps and across the lawn, over to the bumper of the van. The metal frame was cool in the night air, stars reflected in every window.

Like Jumin before her, Nari had never looked better than when moonlight shone in her hair, even if that particular memory left him avoiding eye contact. He still did not regret kissing Jumin, but he would never forgive himself for the betrayal; a betrayal that haunted him even as he took in Nari’s trembling body and his gaze automatically skimmed her lips. 

He told her everything, with only a few minor exceptions. He told her the full story about Rika, even the parts that Jumin didn’t know. He told her everything he had ever told Luciel, with a few embellishments here and there to hide the stories he was still not ready to tell. He never told her of 2:15; never mentioned how it was he lost his sight. He said nothing of Juyeon at all.

With every new revelation, she fell into a greater state of contemplation, only worsened by the more recent developments: the agency’s backup crew set to join them at any moment, Luciel’s insistences that they return to the castle immediately, regardless of the danger. 

“That’s… a lot,” she said after a long silence.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I know it’s a lot to take in.”

“Given everything that’s happened in the last few months, it actually explains a lot,” she said. “Seven’s brother…I should have known. I knew there was something about Ray, I just didn’t-“

“He’s a shadow of what he once was,” said Jihyun. “And you didn’t know him before.”

“I know,” she said, “but...he and Rika...I can’t imagine how Seven must be feeling. I should go talk to him.”

She dropped down to the floor, grabbing onto the bumper behind her to steady her weight. Her hand brushed against his on the descent, leaving a warmth behind that lingered long afterwards.

“Aren’t you coming in?” She asked, cheeks flushing a bright pink as she flinched her hand away.

She was so much stronger than he was; already considering how to help as opposed to being buried alive by the shock. It was wildly inappropriate to admire her and yet he found himself doing so nonetheless. 

No,” he said, gazing into the stars. “Just a little longer.”

“Alright,” she said, pressing him no further, “I’ll see you in a bit.”

Jihyun did not watch her leave, instead closing his eyes and taking in the scent of the woods around them, the creaking of the surrounding trees and breeze through his hair.

He heard her footsteps through autumn leaves long before she spoke a word.

“I know you’re there,” he whispered into the night, peering over his shoulder at the woman emerging from the trees.

* * *

_ Saeran, promise me you’ll stay the way you are. _

_ Promise me you’ll be the kind Saeran, the one who says sorry instead of getting angry. _

_ Promise me you won’t let Mom change you. _

Saeran squeezed his eyes closed, the elixir muddling his senses and leaving his body numb. He had taken a larger dose than usual: one for the anaesthesia and another for the misery. 

He was useless...weak...a husk of a person; a thought that circled his mind as he ran the trace on the redheaded hacker.

No. Not a redheaded hacker. Saeyoung.

His thoughts grew louder and louder, ebbing to nothing with each sip of elixir as if he listened to them from underwater.

The saviour left without him in the end, two minor acolytes driving her to the last known coordinates of the stolen vehicle. He clutched at his shoulder instead of asking to go with her; the pain a comforting distraction.

As instructed, he and Juyeon took charge of the castle in her absence, though it was probably more accurate to suggest that Juyeon held most of the responsibility. After the saviour left, he took a seat in the medical bay, eyeing the clock as the castle doctor removed the bullet.

The doctor was originally a plastic surgeon, trained in scar tissue and adhering to the whims of wealthy strangers. It was his idea that Saeran drink the elixir for fear that he might pass out from the pain. He protested at first, convinced that the ache would more than make up for his guilt, but the prospect of feeling nothing at all was far more appealing than feeling everything at once.

He wondered what Juyeon was doing. The saviour had told them to wait until her next instructions before evacuating to site B, though hours had passed since then and she had almost certainly had time to make the preparations. 

_ I don’t think you’re weak. I think you’re kind and tender. _

He turned his head towards to the doctor’s careful movements, feeling nothing either on the inside or outside and missing a sunset that no longer existed. A sunset that passed over too soon, along with the ghost of blue popsicles and a pinky intertwined with his own.

_ Promise me you’ll never change. _

_ Let’s promise on this ice cream. _

* * *

The Saviour’s room was the largest in the castle, with draping curtains and a Queen sized bed. Opposite the bed was a large mirror, though Rika preferred to drape a thick blanket over it when alone.

She could spend hours staring at her reflection, poking and prodding at her own face in search of  _ something _ . Sometimes, when she leaned forward and stared into her own eyes, she was sure that she saw her soul on the other side. 

She wondered what Nari’s soul looked like, a question that lingered at the back of her mind as she fastened her mask. If she considered it hard enough, it was easy enough to conjure images of ivory wings and blazing sunshine. Rika wished that she had shorn off her hair.

She had bottled a special bottle of elixir just for Nari; a headier batch than usual. It was a darker blue and had a stronger scent than the others and she was almost proud of it, even if she did not know what exactly it would do to Nari’s body. Elixirs varied from person to person and this was no ordinary bottle. Even the plain and simple ones brought death upon those whose bodies were too weak to embrace it.

Rika had not expected to see her again and was not sure if she should be happy or devastated when not only did she see her alive, but chatting with V under the stars. It made a sort of sense that she did not want to acknowledge: that despite her proclamations of transformation, she was the only one to remain unchanged.

“You’re different, V,” she said, recalling the brightness of his eyes as he spoke to Nari Song.

Once, not so long ago, he sacrificed each and every one of his tender words and smiles for her benefit. He would only smile when she did and save his praises for her alone. That gentleness had long since left him, though, and when he looked at her, it was as if they had never been lovers at all. 

“You’re not my sun anymore, are you?”

“Rika…” He said, whispering her name as if it cut him to the bone. She supposed it probably did, now that he had dropped her by the wayside.

She hated the look in his eyes; the same pitiful look from her parents before him, the same as her classmates when she dragged her nails across their skin. 

“So that’s it,” she said, “you’re going to leave me alone like this?”

It made sense, after all. No one had ever been able to withstand her darkness; not even the ones that vowed they would. There was always something brighter, something warmer that pulled them in tight. 

“You’ve changed,” she said again. “You-you said you would guide me with your light. Didn’t you love me? Was that a lie as well?”

“Rika,” said V, “our love wasn’t meant to be. Please listen: neither of us know how to love, not how it’s meant to be-“

“But we  _ are  _ meant to be,” she spluttered, “don’t stand there and lie to me! You told me you loved me; that I could count in you forever!”

“Rika…”

“No!” She said, recalling his soft whispers as he dried her tears. “It was real to me.”

He promised that he would never leave her- that she could break him apart in a multitude of increasingly grotesque ways- but now he meant to break his promise like everyone before.

“I believed you,” she whispered. “Why did you promise me such beautiful things if you only meant to steal them away?”

“Rika…I’m-“

“Shut up!” She said. “I don’t want to hear you, not anymore. You’re just the same as everyone else who left me alone to suffer!”

Her eyes burned with tears and she clenched her fists.

“Rika...Rika calm down.”

“No,” she said, just above a whisper. “No, you’re worse...I trusted you!”

She turned towards the forest, the sympathetic expression on his face too much for her to bear. 

“This is all a lie,” she hissed. “You always lie.”

He put a hand on her shoulder and she slapped it off, turning back towards him and grabbing at his shirt. They had argued before; he had said other things she did not believe. He had always patted her on the head and told her everything would be okay. Why did he hesitate now?

“Tell me you love me!” She pleaded, staring up into his eyes for any sign of softness. “Tell me you’ll never leave! We don’t exist without one another.”

_ I don’t exist without you. _

She squeezed tighter, knuckles white.

“Tell me it wasn’t a lie!”

He did not falter though, making no move to comfort her or answer her pleas.

“It’s time for us to move on,” he said. “Anything we had is long over.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” she said. “You have the RFA...you have... _ her _ . Who do I have? What am I supposed to do now?”

She released his shirt, rage boiling through her until she could no longer see beyond it. His words once silenced the darkest of her thoughts, though now it amplified them several times over.

“I have no choice,” she said, willing him to fall silent forever.

V’s expression of confusion changed to one of horror as she reached for her belt and dragged out the blade she reserved for prayer.

For a moment, her thoughts fell silent.

“R-“

Rika saw the blade shine in the moonlight, felt the impact of it hitting flesh and V groaning as he fell to the floor. The reality of it did not sink in, however, until she felt his blood on her hands.

“V...V,” she said, dropping the knife and falling to the ground beside him. “V, I…”

V choked as he rolled onto his back, hands hard against the open wound in an attempt to stave off the bleeding.

“Go,” he murmured.

“You can’t die,” she wailed, “don’t you dare die.”

He reached for her hand, his fingers dyed a darker scarlet than her own.

“Rika…” He said, clutching her hand so tightly that she feared he might crush it to the bone. “Rika...fly free.”

His arm fell limp and her screams echoed in the darkness.

* * *

Seven’s backpack hit the floor with a thump, though not as loud as the crash of the cupboards that came after it.

Taser, check.

Bullets, check.

Bulletproof vest, check.

Nari didn’t know how long she watched him without saying a word. She had planned to say something- _ anything _ -by way of reassurance, but in the end the words died before crossing her lips. It was a difficult situation, and one that would have left her speechless even if she had never been drugged.

She recognised the desperation in his words, though, saw the trembling of his fingers. Her fingers had trembled too when she crouched down onto her hands and knees in the penthouse kitchen, searching under every appliance and shelf. She did not know how Seven felt in that moment, but she did know the consequences of a rash decision. 

He threw his equipment inside his rucksack and fastened the zipper with such force that Nari was surprised it didn’t rip the fabric, hauling the bag over his shoulder and storming towards the door. He froze on the spot when he saw her standing there, though, forcing him to stop in his tracks.

“Nari,” he said. “You should be sleeping. Vanderwood will start fussing if-“

“What are you doing?” 

He did not answer her and she shrugged off his hoodie, dusting it out before holding it towards him. He accepted it only hesitantly, lowering his rucksack to the floor as he put it back on.

“I  _ have _ to go,” he said, flinching the second it crossed his lips, “if I leave him again…”

“I think you’re putting the cart before the horse,” said Nari, thinking back to the moment she ripped the engagement ring from her finger. “In fact...I think you’re putting the cart in an entirely different pasture.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s easy to get caught up in the moment, to see things only as we want to and not as they are.”

Her head hurt and it was hard to find the right words. She pinched the bridge of her nose with a grimace before continuing.

“You think you're helping your brother by dropping everything to save him,” she said. “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying...I guess...that an action can be the right one, but still wrong in practise. If you leave him today, you can save him tomorrow,” she said. “But if you die, you’ll really leave him for good. Everything you gave up and went through will be for nothing.”

Seven clutched at his rucksack, clearly meaning to say something more, only to jump start into action at the sound of a scream outside.

“What was that?” 

“I don’t know,” said Seven, rushing for the door, “but not anything good.”

They rushed into the hallway, agents that could walk clustering at the front door to the lodge. Vanderwood peered around the doorway, cigarette wedged between his lips as he loaded his pistol

“What’s going on?” 

“No idea,” said Vanderwood, gun clicking into place. “But it’s coming from outside.”

Nari’s blood ran cold and, from the look on Seven’s face, the same terrible thought had crossed his mind as well.

“V!” She squeaked, throwing herself out of the door and tearing through the grass, agents spilling out behind her.

She ran towards the van, two of the agents behind her pointing out an armed hostile as they ran through the trees to give chase. Nari caught only the briefest glimpse of them-golden hair glimmering in the moonlight- though none of it actually sank in until she saw V curled up on the floor, shirt soaked with blood.

“V,” she cried out, dropping to her knees and lifting his head up onto her lap. “V-.”

She meant to ask him what had happened, but could do nothing but gasp.

_ “ _ Nari,” he rasped, gazing up into her face as if he dreamed her there. “Nari...I’m…”

“Don’t speak,” she said. “Save your strength.”

He smiled at that, weakly.

“No. This is it for me,” he said. “It’s what I deserve.”

“Don’t talk like that,” she said, remembering Rika’s hands across her face. “You didn’t deserve any of this.”

Someone clapped a hand on her shoulder and she turned to see Seven standing there, an expression of horror across his face that doubtlessly matched her own.

“The keys,” he said, and for a moment she thought that he meant to leave them there. “There’s a hospital on the outskirts of the city...we need to get him there at once. We used up most of the medical supplies already.”

“This is my fault,” Nari murmured, vision blurring with tears. “If it weren’t for me…”

If she had only questioned Juyeon earlier; had never fought with Jumin...

“Don’t blame yourself,” said V. “You didn’t know anything about-“

“But I..” She began, meaning to insist that she should have known, had been embraced into the RFA and only ever caused them trouble. It was the wrong time for blame, though, and she squeezed her eyes shut, blinking away the tears before they could fall.

“Nari,” said V, reaching up to her face. “I’m so...glad I met you.”

“D-don’t talk like that,” she wailed, the warmth of his hand comforting even if it smelled so strongly of blood. “You’re going to be alright!”

His expression was serene and in that moment she understood that he had accepted the worst case scenario long ago.

“You can’t die,” she murmured, unable to imagine a world with a V shaped absence. A world where Jumin kept bottles of wine for no one to drink. One where they did not set a third seat at their table after deciding on French cuisine. She could not stand to think of a world where all that remained of him was the void he left behind.

“If you die,” she said, only a little above a whisper. “If you die...I’ll never forgive you.”

V protested even as they lifted him into the van, words devolving into pained moans at the change in angle.

“We need to slow the bleeding,” said Seven, guiding Nari’s hands over it and grimacing at the state of the entry wound. “She kept the dagger, damn.” 

V reached for Seven’s arm, a dark expression across his face.

“Luciel,” he said, “leave me.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” said Seven, voice wavering. “I was going to take the van anyway.”

Nari was sure she saw him wipe his eyes before turning the key in the ignition, though said nothing of it. 

It was not yet time to grieve him. Not until he was really gone.

* * *

The end of the work day came slowly, a fact only made worse by his decision to remain at the office for longer than expected. He missed Elizabeth and Nari and wanted nothing more than to go home and curl up in bed with them both, even if he knew such a thing was unlikely to happen.

At the back of his mind, he still believed that when he returned home she would be there, a cup of tea in one hand and a pile of paperwork almost as tall as she was. In his imagination, she rushed to greet him with a kiss, leaving a smudgy lipstick mark on his cheek that he pretended not to notice because he never wanted to wash it off.

There was no point in denying that there was something strange about her disappearance and Luciel’s behaviour only added to his anxiety. With Nari gone and neither V nor Luciel returning any of his calls, he was lost to his imagination, where everything was far worse than in reality. 

It was better to consider the pros and cons of any deal; to counter the worst case scenario in order to achieve the best results. In his present state, he did not know what it was he should counter, feeling for all the world like a deer caught in the headlights of a car he couldn’t see.

When his desk phone began to ring, he thought nothing of it. Jaehee and several other colleagues had attempted to reach him at various points of the day, only to seem incredibly confused when he was even brisker than usual. When he saw Luciel’s name in the caller ID, he couldn’t snatch up his phone fast enough.

“Luciel,” he said. “Wh-”

“Jumin!” Luciel all but yelled into the receiver without giving him chance to talk. “I’m going to the Kyung Medical Center. We need a surgeon.”

He meant to ask why, to demand whatever information Luciel was keeping from him. The background noise left him silent, though, blood turning to ice in his veins at the sound of squealing tires and groaning from a voice he knew too well. A groan he had heard in similar fashions during any given childhood illness.

“Luciel,” he said, “what’s going on?”

Luciel said nothing at first, swearing on the other end of the line; a woman screaming out in the background whose voice he wished he didn’t know.

“Luciel,” he said, “what do you mean ‘we’?”

Luciel said nothing, though, and the line went dead.

“Luciel?!” He called. “Luciel?”

He lowered the receiver slowly, Luciel’s words echoing through his mind. It was the confirmation he had wanted from the beginning, but now it was within his grasp he no longer wanted it. Nari’s screams were what haunted him the most.  He didn’t want to imagine her afraid, but it was impossible not to connect the dots. He couldn’t stop himself coming back to the realisation that V and Luciel were with her but he clearly was not.

He ripped his desk phone from the socket and threw it across the room, the crash of it against his bookshelf barely audible against the blare of his thoughts.

* * *

_ It’s time _

Juyeon had been waiting for the message to come, but when it did she found herself nervous. She went over her tasks once and then twice: the checklist of acolytes she had evacuated; the gasoline she had meticulously poured.

Only about six or seven believers remained on the premises, the rest shipped off to site B to reunite with the saviour. Juyeon had saved the burliest believers for last: the ones who could carry multiple bottles of fuel without breaking a sweat. 

She took a deep breath, reassuring herself that everything was going according to plan; that all she had left to do was light the fuel and get in the van. No one knew what she had done; there was no need to be so afraid. Even so, she hesitated the moment she lit a match, glancing across at her surrounding acolytes before letting it drop.

She still didn’t know what had happened to Ray and it only left her more on edge than usual. It didn’t help that he had said nothing to anyone since the saviour’s departure from the castle, a strange dark cloud hanging over him that Juyeon did not care enough about to understand. At the very least she had expected him to insist he light the fire and not her, but instead he sat in the same spot in front of the van he had occupied since seeing the doctor, legs crossed and eyes glazed as he watched the flames grow. Under ordinary circumstances, she might have made a joke about him, but it wasn’t much fun without a reaction.

“Everyone, into the van,” she said as smoke billowed through the castle doors. “We’ll be leaving soon.”

She climbed inside herself after the instruction, counting the heads of every acolyte that followed. 

All were present except for one.

Juyeon climbed back out of the van with a sigh, peering off into the distance at Ray’s retreating back. He was walking towards the castle-no-towards the fire.

“Ray!” She called out, eager for him to turn and face her, though getting nothing in response. 

For the briefest moment, she understood his intent and wondered if it was worth it to follow. As far as anyone was concerned, he went into the fire and never returned. No one would question her leadership and with Ray gone, she would remain unchallenged as the Saviour’s favourite.

She clenched her fists, though, realising that she would not be satisfied even if the Saviour never discovered the truth. She would know it, after all. Where was the joy in beating him if he wasn’t there to hear her gloat?

She turned back to the other acolytes.

“Go to the next location.”

“B-but, Miss Jenny-“

Her words were cheery, even if her expression was anything but.

“Go on without me! I have a couple of loose ends to deal with.”

* * *

The drive to the hospital seemed to last forever, the shuddering of V’s body growing shallower with every breath. Nari lost track of her pleas that he live. By the time they arrived there, she had given up on begging Seven to drive faster and sat at V’s side in a miserable silence.

When she saw the hospital building in the distance, it took everything she had not to cry and she blinked away her tears as Seven climbed out of the driver’s seat. Her knees buckled as Seven turned to close the van doors and left her to hold V upright, her grip on his waist growing tighter by the second. He had grown increasingly quiet during their journey, only crying out at particularly sharp bends or when Seven hit the brakes. At the change in elevation, he howled in pain, buckling over almost instinctively.

“Can you carry him?” Seven asked the moment the doors were shut. 

She had originally thought he would come back and help her carry V into accident and emergency, but at the conflicted expression on his face, she thought she understood.

V was heavy but regrets would be worse.

“Say hi to Ray for me.” 

* * *

The smell of smoke was heavy on the air; permeating each one of Saeran’s senses in a way that was familiar. It reminded him of chains to his ankles; the scent of alcohol that lingered in every corner of his childhood home. He had always believed that he would meet his end there and watching the castle catch light was strangely comforting. He had always belonged there; everything he had ever done had merely been another step closer to this moment.

He meant to go to the treasury, even though there was nothing left. The treasures within were some of the first things to be evacuated: acolytes clutching trinkets as the vans left the driveway and disappeared out of sight. There was something cathartic about masterworks burning away into nothing and even if the room lay empty, Saeran decided he could at least pretend he wasn’t worthless when the flames came for him too.

He passed it off as his imagination when he heard someone screaming his name through the smoke, a voice that grew louder and closer the more he ventured into the fire. It was difficult to deny it, though, when the owner reached for his sleeve and dragged him back several paces.

“What the  _ hell _ are you thinking?” They snapped, slapping him across the face so hard that he stumbled backwards.

“Wh…”

He hadn’t expected Juyeon to be the one standing there, yet there she was, leaning over and coughing from the smoke.

“Why do you care? Wouldn’t you be better off with me gone?”

Juyeon had spent so long chasing the saviour’s affections that he found it hard to believe she would hesitate to leave him for dead, much less risk her own skin to save him.

“Don’t think too much into it,” she said. “Brains don’t suit on you.”

He didn’t say what he was thinking: that he didn’t understand why she would stop the inevitable. Everyone left him behind eventually. Of all people, why did she have to be the one to break the cycle? 

“Listen” she said. “I don’t know what happened to you and I don’t care. Stay here if that’s what you want, just don’t come crying to the rest of us when the believers remember you as the chickenshit who burned himself alive to escape his problems.”

“I’d rather they didn’t remember me at all.”

“Well bully for you, I guess,” she said, “but unfortunately it’s not something you can control.”

The venom in her words burned almost as much as the fire, but he found he didn’t mind. The angrier she got at him, the more she reminded him of someone else. Someone who had slapped him around the face and called him a moron for drinking a second glass of water. 

“I don’t…” He said. “There’s no one…”

He couldn’t stand to speak anymore, couldn’t stand to listen to his own pathetic voice. 

“If you give yourself up now,” she said, stern expression making its way into her voice. “You’ll never get the satisfaction of seeing them suffer.”

_ Suffer. _

The word echoed in his mind. Every syllable, every intonation. 

He hated Juyeon and her endless vanity, but could not disagree. He had suffered, had rotted away in dungeon cells, had downed an elixir as bright blue and overwhelming as the popsicles his brother bought. He had suffered more than anyone he had ever known, struggling for a place in paradise, while simultaneously believing that someone would come and rescue him.

And only then did he truly understand the Saviour’s words. He was wrong to have waited for Saeyoung, to have taken his promises to heart. It was a weakness and one he should have shrugged off a long time ago, having seen in its true colours. He could not achieve his true potential while clinging to memories of a life that no longer existed. He would never be anything but an airhead and an idiot if he continued to hold himself back.

The saviour had warned him that one day he might come to question the path he had taken; that the poison of society ran deep and could not be so easily removed. Saeran couldn’t believe how ignorant and weak willed he had actually been. He had always been proud of his conviction and adherence to the Saviour’s beliefs. He had always believed that he would know temptation when he saw it, but he was beginning to understand that all of it-from Nari’s arrival to his attack on the RFA-was a test of his character and little more. He was sure he would never forgive himself for buckling so easily. In the days to come he would have to work harder, drink more elixir, become the shield and sword the saviour had always wanted him to be.

His heart skipped a beat at the thought of seeing his brother again, of finally stripping him clean of contamination until there was nothing left. With Saeyoung gone, he could live unchallenged, finally free from his own weaknesses.

He laughed, a low snicker that grew louder and harder, until there were tears in his eyes.

“I see,” he said. “I see…”

He clenched his hands into fists, eager to tell the saviour everything he had learned. It must have been her intention from the beginning, perhaps even her test. He reached out for Juyeon’s shoulder, a contented smile across his face.

And then, without another word, he shoved her into the fire.

* * *

After Luciel’s phone call, everything happened in slow motion. Jumin arrived at the helipad in record timing, storming past Assistant Kang and glaring at the uninterrupted sky. He called the hospital twice in what seemed like an hour, only for audible confusion from the receptionist, who assured him only five minutes had passed and they had yet to admit either a man or a woman matching his description.

Doctor Park was far less confused and a good deal more annoyed by the frequency of his phone calls.

_ I’m putting my shoes on, Mister Han...nothing much has changed. _

He threw himself into the helicopter the moment it arrived, blurting out the hospital address so quickly that the pilot gave him second glances. He spent the journey with his hands in his lap, fingers tightly entwined and expression grave as he watched the city below. Even as they landed on the hospital roof, he reached for the door handle.

If they could only get there faster and he knew what had actually happened, he would not have to imagine anymore. 

As luck would have it, the receptionist recognised his voice and was able to not only give him an immediate status report of V and Nari, but also direct him to V’s room in the ICU. He had needed emergency surgery for a puncture wound to the abdomen, which she assured him had been a success. The woman with him had suffered a trauma and seemed to be drunk, but beyond that appeared to be fine.

He didn’t believe her, though. He had heard Nari’s screaming and had time to imagine the scene. He was sure that V would be dead when he got to him and Nari gone forever. As he approached V’s room, he called Jaehee, needing another voice to quieten his mind. If he was completely honest, he needed Nari, but that thought left him even more anxious than before. 

“I’m sorry for my abruptness earlier,” he said, picking out the numbers on every door. “I received some bad news. It seems that V was stabbed earlier this evening.”

“V was  _ what _ ?”

Jaehee’s shock matched his own and, in a way, that made him feel better.

“I don’t...Mister Han, where are you now?”

He was almost at V’s room, the door looming before him. He wanted to believe it wasn’t really the one he was looking for and took a deep breath before reaching for the handle.

“I’m at the hospital. It seems his surgery was a success. It might be a while before he wakes up, however.”  

This wasn't his first time seeing V in a hospital bed. He was one of his first visitors, in fact, after the death of his mother. Jumin had not known what known what to say to him and pretended he couldn't see his tears, instead striking up conversation about their current homework. For many years it had been the most emotionally charged moment of their friendship and one of the scariest things to happen to him, but it didn't prepare him for the sight of V  strapped to a heart monitor and breathing apparatus.

Nari was sitting beside the bed and it occurred to him that he did not know what to say to her either. The last time they saw one another in person, she had been on the verge of tears. 

“I,” he said, “Nari-“

She got to her feet before he could finish and threw her arms around his middle. 

It wasn’t enough to say that he missed her and so he never did, standing in place and absorbing every detail of her body against his so that he would never forget.

“How,” she sobbed, burying her face in his shirt, “how did this happen?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “but I know how it’s going to end.”

He reached into his pocket, pulling out the ring he had been keeping there, lifting her hand into his and placing a kiss on her open palm before placing the ring in her grasp. For a while she only stared at it, turning the metal over in her hand for a few seconds at most, but long enough for him to convince himself that she would throw it away all over again.

His heart skipped a beat when she put it back on and spread out her fingers to admire how it looked. 

“Jumin,” she said.

“Mm?”

“Take me home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is almost 10k words ಠ╭╮ಠ


	11. EPILOGUE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SO EMOTIONALLY AND PHYSICALLY DRAINED BUT OMG I'VE ENJOYED THIS PROJECT
> 
> THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING, LEAVING KUDOS AND/OR COMMENTING. This has been a real challenge and I am so, so, so grateful to you all. 
> 
> Also Daeshim and Juyeon aren't my OCs, they belong to kiserusmoke and professionalcinderella (yoosungshoodie on ao3).

**Six months later**

Right up until her own engagement, Nari Song could honestly say that she had never given much thought to weddings. She accepted each and every invitation passed her way with enthusiasm, only to watch the ceremonies play out as a sort of fiction. She even laughed off the idea at dinner with relatives, considering it as something for a distant year and version of herself she did not recognise.

Even so, she accepted Jumin’s proposal without hesitation, tested wedding cakes, catering samples and dresses with enthusiasm. Suddenly she could think of very little but brochures and colour swatches, venues and flower meanings. In a way, she had been right from the beginning. Even engaged, with written evidence of the fact, she waited instinctively for the dream to be over.

She supposed it didn’t help that from the moment she agreed to be the future Mrs Han, almost every journalist she met clapped themselves over the back at their intelligence for comparing her to Cinderella, sometimes subtly, though most often not at all. In the past year she had learned more about happy endings and beautiful castles than she would ever have believed possible, as well as several harsher realities: Cinderella’s glass slippers most likely gave her blisters and living happily ever after took a lot more work than lifting a curse.

A lot had changed since her return from the Mint Eye castle. At his own insistence, V was released from hospital only a few days later, returning to the messenger long before Seven and finally filling the RFA in on the events of the past few months. It was a harsh revelation and one that every member handled differently. Jumin’s responses on the messenger were few and far between, usually consisting of single word answers. His sadness and anger lay carefully hidden, visible only when he fell into quiet contemplation or buried himself both in work and the investigation to follow. Jaehee was perhaps the least surprised by the reality of Rika’s character, privately mentioning to Nari that she had been suspicious of her from the very beginning but never in a position to say so. Yoosung refused to accept any part of the story, claiming V to be a liar and leaving the messenger for almost a week, during which time he moved in with Zen. In such a difficult time for the RFA, their bickering and contrasting personalities was a welcome distraction. Seven did not return until several weeks later and, although he confirmed V’s version of events, refused to say any more on the messenger about where exactly he had been. Within hours of his return, he, Jumin and V combined forces to continue the investigation of Mint Eye. Nari did not have much to offer in terms of money or social standing and, perhaps out of respect for her and the traumas she had suffered, the team asked nothing more of her than a witness statement.

V was not the only one with revelations. On their journey back to the penthouse, Jumin announced that he had had a disagreement with his father and, as a consequence, all prior arrangements for their wedding were cancelled. Although ‘disagreement’ was his exact wording, Nari knew that he used it out of respect and nothing else, leaving them full control over their own ceremony. It almost seemed too good to be true: the media there only by her permission; her family and friends seated where she wished; C&R unmentioned and entirely uninvolved. Jumin even went so far as to draft an invitation for his mother, which Nari assured him wasn’t necessary, though he mailed it out anyhow. Jieun was not only Jumin’s biological mother but also Chief Han’s first wife and intriguing on many levels.

One unfortunate consequence of holding all of the strings, however, was the influx of companies appealing to her personally. Before she had adhered to names approved by C&R public relations and had little in the way of input, but with C&R no longer involved, the prospect of her future wedding was daunting in ways it had never been before.

She didn’t miss the irony that even though she hadn’t entertained the idea of being a bride up until recently, it took her months to choose a wedding dress. She had no specific design in mind and none of the ones she examined felt familiar to the one in her heart. The one she finally settled on came from a small boutique tucked away in Gwangbokro. The moment she received an e-mail confirming the initial sketches, she squeaked with joy and jumped to her feet, rushing through the penthouse to find Jumin.

She checked the bedroom first and then his home office, grinning widely at the sound of his voice coming from within. She expected him to be on the phone to Jaehee, but in reality he wasn’t at all. He gripped onto his desk with one hand and the phone with the other, both white knuckled and trembling.

“Jihyun listen to me,” he muttered into the phone, “there is nothing more you could have done.”

Two days earlier, Jihyun and Seven and a number of agents had infiltrated the second castle, having chased leads and dead ends for months. The rest of the RFA had been on tenterhooks ever since, both Nari and Jumin snatching up their phones at every notification of a new chat.

Nari’s blood ran cold at his words, wondering what on earth had happened. His eyes met hers as he hung up the phone and she reached out to embrace him, burying her face in his chest. She didn’t want to know and yet she needed to. Jihyun was alive, but at what cost? Slowly, Jumin wrapped his arms around her, lips grazing her forehead.

“It’s over,” he said, so quietly that she wondered which of them he was talking to. “Mint Eye...Rika. It’s finished.”

Nari knew she should have been relieved, but she had heard the panic in his voice.

“Is she…”

“She’s alive.”

Nari didn’t know how long she stood there clutching onto Jumin. At first she meant to comfort him, but the longer she stayed there, the more difficult it was to tell who was actually consoling who.

“What was it you wanted to speak with me about?”

Within a matter of seconds, the wedding had ceased to be important. For moment she even forgot why it was she had gone to his office in the first place. All that mattered was the room around them and their arms around one another.

Ultimately, it ended exactly as he said it would.

“It’s not important. Let’s have some tea.”

There was plenty of time to consider their future. They had months, years and more to worry about weddings and babies and other matters. Real life was not a fairytale, there were no wicked witches or curses to destroy, thereby earning a life free of problems. Life was scar tissue and fractures and discovering the people who saw beyond the cracks.

* * *

When Daeshim Ryu first met V, he could hardly believe it was happening. Half of the arts industry was knowing how best to lie about one’s clients, but not only was V a rare talent, but also handsome and enigmatic. It took everything he had to stop himself rubbing his hands together and cheering in that first meeting. He pretended he had other portfolios to look at, many clients to represent, only to call him back that afternoon, wrapping the phone cord around his finger and offering an appointment in two days.

At the time, he believed V would be his golden goose and in retrospect he did not entirely disagree. V had made him a great deal of money on the rare occasions he actually allowed people to buy his photos.

His upcoming exhibition, _Before the Dawn_ , was the first for many years and the response it gained from the public only reflected the fact. Daeshim’s phone had not stopped ringing since its opening, art collectors and wealthy patrons all desperate for a preview of one picture or another, eager to buy even without seeing the finished product. 

It no longer seemed to matter that he had office hours; his phone continued to ring with questions from interested parties until he eventually gave up and went to bed. At the very least, it had taught him to multitask.

This particular day, Daeshim wedged his phone between his shoulder and his ear, alternating between slicing vegetables and checking the pasta boiling on his stove.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I’ll let him know. He has a number of outstanding offers, but I will let you know as soon as I can.”

He set his phone to one side with a sigh of relief, only to groan as someone knocked at his door. It was rare that he had visitors and as he spent the journey from the kitchen praying it wasn’t another client. It wouldn’t be the first time a particularly desperate buyer showed up at his front door.

First things first, it wasn’t a buyer. It was a stranger in a baseball cap and exceptionally ugly rainproof coat. The cap obscured their face and Daeshim suddenly wished he had brought his phone with him on the off chance he needed to call the police.

“...Can I help you?”

The stranger reached to take off their hat, revealing a face he knew too well.

“ _Juyeon?”_

She looked the same as she always had, save for a disheartened expression and questionable wardrobe. The Juyeon he knew wouldn’t be caught dead in a baseball cap and he wondered if she was upset that he hadn’t recognised her.

“Can I come in?”


End file.
